Rewrite-based equational theorem proving with selection and simplification

We present various refutationally complete calculi for first-order clauses with equality that allow for arbitrary selection of negative atoms in clauses. Refutation completeness is established via the use of well-founded orderings on clauses for defining a Herbrand model for a consistent set of clauses. We also formulate an abstract notion of redundancy and show that the deletion of redundant clauses during the theorem proving process preserves refutation completeness. It is often possible to compute the closure of nontrivial sets of clauses under application of non-redundant inferences. The refutation of goals for such complete sets of clauses is simpler than for arbitrary sets of clauses, in particular one can restrict attention to proofs that have support from the goals without compromising refutation completeness. Additional syntactic properties allow to restrict the search space even further, as we demonstrate for so-called quasi-Horn clauses. The results in this paper contain as special cases or generalize many known results about Knuth-Bendix-like completion procedures (for equations, Horn clauses, and Horn clauses over built-in Booleans), completion of first-order clauses by clausal rewriting, and inductive theorem proving for Horn clauses

New results on rewrite-based satisfiability procedures

Program analysis and verification require decision procedures to reason on theories of data structures. Many problems can be reduced to the satisfiability of sets of ground literals in theory T. If a sound and complete inference system for first-order logic is guaranteed to terminate on T-satisfiability problems, any theorem-proving strategy with that system and a fair search plan is a T-satisfiability procedure. We prove termination of a rewrite-based first-order engine on the theories of records, integer offsets, integer offsets modulo and lists. We give a modularity theorem stating sufficient conditions for termination on a combinations of theories, given termination on each. The above theories, as well as others, satisfy these conditions. We introduce several sets of benchmarks on these theories and their combinations, including both parametric synthetic benchmarks to test scalability, and real-world problems to test performances on huge sets of literals. We compare the rewrite-based theorem prover E with the validity checkers CVC and CVC Lite. Contrary to the folklore that a general-purpose prover cannot compete with reasoners with built-in theories, the experiments are overall favorable to the theorem prover, showing that not only the rewriting approach is elegant and conceptually simple, but has important practical implications.Comment: To appear in the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, 49 page

A Survey of Automated Deduction

We survey research in the automation of deductive inference, from its beginnings in the early history of computing to the present day. We identify and describe the major areas of research interest and their applications. The area is characterised by its wide variety of proof methods, forms of automated deduction and applications

Superposition as a logical glue

The typical mathematical language systematically exploits notational and logical abuses whose resolution requires not just the knowledge of domain specific notation and conventions, but not trivial skills in the given mathematical discipline. A large part of this background knowledge is expressed in form of equalities and isomorphisms, allowing mathematicians to freely move between different incarnations of the same entity without even mentioning the transformation. Providing ITP-systems with similar capabilities seems to be a major way to improve their intelligence, and to ease the communication between the user and the machine. The present paper discusses our experience of integration of a superposition calculus within the Matita interactive prover, providing in particular a very flexible, "smart" application tactic, and a simple, innovative approach to automation.Comment: In Proceedings TYPES 2009, arXiv:1103.311

Saturation-based decision procedures for extensions of the guarded fragment

We apply the framework of Bachmair and Ganzinger for saturation-based theorem proving to derive a range of decision procedures for logical formalisms, starting with a simple terminological language EL, which allows for conjunction and existential restrictions only, and ending with extensions of the guarded fragment with equality, constants, functionality, number restrictions and compositional axioms of form S ◦ T ⊆ H. Our procedures are derived in a uniform way using standard saturation-based calculi enhanced with simplification rules based on the general notion of redundancy. We argue that such decision procedures can be applied for reasoning in expressive description logics, where they have certain advantages over traditionally used tableau procedures, such as optimal worst-case complexity and direct correctness proofs.Wir wenden das Framework von Bachmair und Ganzinger für saturierungsbasiertes Theorembeweisen an, um eine Reihe von Entscheidungsverfahren für logische Formalismen abzuleiten, angefangen von einer simplen terminologischen Sprache EL, die nur Konjunktionen und existentielle Restriktionen erlaubt, bis zu Erweiterungen des Guarded Fragment mit Gleichheit, Konstanten, Funktionalität, Zahlenrestriktionen und Kompositionsaxiomen der Form S ◦ T ⊆ H. Unsere Verfahren sind einheitlich abgeleitet unter Benutzung herkömmlicher saturierungsbasierter Kalküle, verbessert durch Simplifikationsregeln, die auf dem Konzept der Redundanz basieren. Wir argumentieren, daß solche Entscheidungsprozeduren für das Beweisen in ausdrucksvollen Beschreibungslogiken angewendet werden können, wo sie gewisse Vorteile gegenüber traditionell benutzten Tableauverfahren besitzen, wie z.B. optimale worst-case Komplexität und direkte Korrektheitsbeweise

Validating reasoning heuristics using next generation theorem provers

The specification of enterprise information systems using formal specification languages enables the formal verification of these systems. Reasoning about the properties of a formal specification is a tedious task that can be facilitated much through the use of an automated reasoner. However, set theory is a corner stone of many formal specification languages and poses demanding challenges to automated reasoners. To this end a number of heuristics has been developed to aid the Otter theorem prover in finding short proofs for set-theoretic problems. This dissertation investigates the applicability of these heuristics to next generation theorem provers.ComputingM.Sc. (Computer Science