Decidability of All Minimal Models (Revised Version - 2012)

This unpublished note is an alternate, shorter (and hopefully more readable) proof of the decidability of all minimal models. The decidability follows from a proof of the existence of a cellular term in each observational equivalence class of a minimal model

Decidability of higher-order matching

We show that the higher-order matching problem is decidable using a game-theoretic argument.Comment: appears in LMCS (Logical Methods in Computer Science

Reachability under Contextual Locking

The pairwise reachability problem for a multi-threaded program asks, given control locations in two threads, whether they can be simultaneously reached in an execution of the program. The problem is important for static analysis and is used to detect statements that are concurrently enabled. This problem is in general undecidable even when data is abstracted and when the threads (with recursion) synchronize only using a finite set of locks. Popular programming paradigms that limit the lock usage patterns have been identified under which the pairwise reachability problem becomes decidable. In this paper, we consider a new natural programming paradigm, called contextual locking, which ties the lock usage to calling patterns in each thread: we assume that locks are released in the same context that they were acquired and that every lock acquired by a thread in a procedure call is released before the procedure returns. Our main result is that the pairwise reachability problem is polynomial-time decidable for this new programming paradigm as well. The problem becomes undecidable if the locks are reentrant; reentrant locking is a \emph{recursive locking} mechanism which allows a thread in a multi-threaded program to acquire the reentrant lock multiple times.Comment: A preliminary version appears in TACAS 201

Gradual Certified Programming in Coq

Expressive static typing disciplines are a powerful way to achieve high-quality software. However, the adoption cost of such techniques should not be under-estimated. Just like gradual typing allows for a smooth transition from dynamically-typed to statically-typed programs, it seems desirable to support a gradual path to certified programming. We explore gradual certified programming in Coq, providing the possibility to postpone the proofs of selected properties, and to check "at runtime" whether the properties actually hold. Casts can be integrated with the implicit coercion mechanism of Coq to support implicit cast insertion a la gradual typing. Additionally, when extracting Coq functions to mainstream languages, our encoding of casts supports lifting assumed properties into runtime checks. Much to our surprise, it is not necessary to extend Coq in any way to support gradual certified programming. A simple mix of type classes and axioms makes it possible to bring gradual certified programming to Coq in a straightforward manner.Comment: DLS'15 final version, Proceedings of the ACM Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS 2015

The effect of time on ear biometrics

We present an experimental study to demonstrate the effect of the time difference in image acquisition for gallery and probe on the performance of ear recognition. This experimental research is the first study on the time effect on ear biometrics. For the purpose of recognition, we convolve banana wavelets with an ear image and then apply local binary pattern on the convolved image. The histograms of the produced image are then used as features to describe an ear. A histogram intersection technique is then applied on the histograms of two ears to measure the ear similarity for the recognition purposes. We also use analysis of variance (ANOVA) to select features to identify the best banana wavelets for the recognition process. The experimental results show that the recognition rate is only slightly reduced by time. The average recognition rate of 98.5% is achieved for an eleven month-difference between gallery and probe on an un-occluded ear dataset of 1491 images of ears selected from Southampton University ear database

Reachability Analysis of Communicating Pushdown Systems

The reachability analysis of recursive programs that communicate asynchronously over reliable FIFO channels calls for restrictions to ensure decidability. Our first result characterizes communication topologies with a decidable reachability problem restricted to eager runs (i.e., runs where messages are either received immediately after being sent, or never received). The problem is EXPTIME-complete in the decidable case. The second result is a doubly exponential time algorithm for bounded context analysis in this setting, together with a matching lower bound. Both results extend and improve previous work from La Torre et al

Rewriting Modulo \beta in the \lambda\Pi-Calculus Modulo

The lambda-Pi-calculus Modulo is a variant of the lambda-calculus with dependent types where beta-conversion is extended with user-defined rewrite rules. It is an expressive logical framework and has been used to encode logics and type systems in a shallow way. Basic properties such as subject reduction or uniqueness of types do not hold in general in the lambda-Pi-calculus Modulo. However, they hold if the rewrite system generated by the rewrite rules together with beta-reduction is confluent. But this is too restrictive. To handle the case where non confluence comes from the interference between the beta-reduction and rewrite rules with lambda-abstraction on their left-hand side, we introduce a notion of rewriting modulo beta for the lambda-Pi-calculus Modulo. We prove that confluence of rewriting modulo beta is enough to ensure subject reduction and uniqueness of types. We achieve our goal by encoding the lambda-Pi-calculus Modulo into Higher-Order Rewrite System (HRS). As a consequence, we also make the confluence results for HRSs available for the lambda-Pi-calculus Modulo.Comment: In Proceedings LFMTP 2015, arXiv:1507.0759