391 research outputs found
A Notion of Dynamic Interface for Depth-Bounded Object-Oriented Packages
Programmers using software components have to follow protocols that specify
when it is legal to call particular methods with particular arguments. For
example, one cannot use an iterator over a set once the set has been changed
directly or through another iterator. We formalize the notion of dynamic
package interfaces (DPI), which generalize state-machine interfaces for single
objects, and give an algorithm to statically compute a sound abstraction of a
DPI. States of a DPI represent (unbounded) sets of heap configurations and
edges represent the effects of method calls on the heap. We introduce a novel
heap abstract domain based on depth-bounded systems to deal with potentially
unboundedly many objects and the references among them. We have implemented our
algorithm and show that it is effective in computing representations of common
patterns of package usage, such as relationships between viewer and label,
container and iterator, and JDBC statements and cursors
Strong Invariants Are Hard: On the Hardness of Strongest Polynomial Invariants for (Probabilistic) Programs
We show that computing the strongest polynomial invariant for single-path
loops with polynomial assignments is at least as hard as the Skolem problem, a
famous problem whose decidability has been open for almost a century. While the
strongest polynomial invariants are computable for affine loops, for polynomial
loops the problem remained wide open. As an intermediate result of independent
interest, we prove that reachability for discrete polynomial dynamical systems
is Skolem-hard as well. Furthermore, we generalize the notion of invariant
ideals and introduce moment invariant ideals for probabilistic programs. With
this tool, we further show that the strongest polynomial moment invariant is
(i) uncomputable, for probabilistic loops with branching statements, and (ii)
Skolem-hard to compute for polynomial probabilistic loops without branching
statements. Finally, we identify a class of probabilistic loops for which the
strongest polynomial moment invariant is computable and provide an algorithm
for it
The complexity of the word problems for commutative semigroups and polynomial ideals
AbstractAny decision procedure for the word problems for commutative semigroups and polynomial deals inherently requires computational storage space growing exponentially with the size of the problem instance to which the procedure is applied. This bound is achieved by a simple procedure for the semigroup problem
A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages
The separability problem for word languages of a class by
languages of a class asks, for two given languages and
from , whether there exists a language from that
includes and excludes , that is, and . In this work, we assume some mild closure properties for
and study for which such classes separability by a piecewise
testable language (PTL) is decidable. We characterize these classes in terms of
decidability of (two variants of) an unboundedness problem. From this, we
deduce that separability by PTL is decidable for a number of language classes,
such as the context-free languages and languages of labeled vector addition
systems. Furthermore, it follows that separability by PTL is decidable if and
only if one can compute for any language of the class its downward closure wrt.
the scattered substring ordering (i.e., if the set of scattered substrings of
any language of the class is effectively regular).
The obtained decidability results contrast some undecidability results. In
fact, for all (non-regular) language classes that we present as examples with
decidable separability, it is undecidable whether a given language is a PTL
itself.
Our characterization involves a result of independent interest, which states
that for any kind of languages and , non-separability by PTL is
equivalent to the existence of common patterns in and
Green's Relations in Finite Transformation Semigroups
We consider the complexity of Green's relations when the semigroup is given
by transformations on a finite set. Green's relations can be defined by
reachability in the (right/left/two-sided) Cayley graph. The equivalence
classes then correspond to the strongly connected components. It is not
difficult to show that, in the worst case, the number of equivalence classes is
in the same order of magnitude as the number of elements. Another important
parameter is the maximal length of a chain of components. Our main contribution
is an exponential lower bound for this parameter. There is a simple
construction for an arbitrary set of generators. However, the proof for
constant alphabet is rather involved. Our results also apply to automata and
their syntactic semigroups.Comment: Full version of a paper submitted to CSR 2017 on 2016-12-1
Reachability in Vector Addition Systems is Primitive-Recursive in Fixed Dimension
The reachability problem in vector addition systems is a central question,
not only for the static verification of these systems, but also for many
inter-reducible decision problems occurring in various fields. The currently
best known upper bound on this problem is not primitive-recursive, even when
considering systems of fixed dimension. We provide significant refinements to
the classical decomposition algorithm of Mayr, Kosaraju, and Lambert and to its
termination proof, which yield an ACKERMANN upper bound in the general case,
and primitive-recursive upper bounds in fixed dimension. While this does not
match the currently best known TOWER lower bound for reachability, it is
optimal for related problems
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