On automating the extraction of programs from termination proofs

Investigamos un sistema de síntesis de programas automatizado que se basa en el paradigma de la programación por pruebas. Para extraer automáticamente un término que calcule una función recursiva dada por un conjunto de ecuaciones, el sistema debe encontrar una prueba formal de la totalidad de la función dada. Debido al marco lógico particular, por lo general estos enfoques dificultan el uso de técnicas de terminación como las de la teoría de reescritura. Superamos esta dificultad para el sistema automatizado que consideramos explotando tipos de productos. Como consecuencia, esto permitiría la incorporación de técnicas de terminación utilizadas en otras áreas sin dejar de extraer programas.We investigate an automated program synthesis system that is based on the paradigm of programming by proofs. To automatically extract a term that computes a recursive function given by a set of equations the system must nd a formal proof of the totality of the given function. Because of the particular logical framework, usually such approaches make it dicult to use termination techniques such as those in rewriting theory. We overcome this diculty for the automated system that we consider by exploiting product types. As a consequence, this would enable the incorporation of termination techniques used in other areas while still extracting programs

Proof-Pattern Recognition and Lemma Discovery in ACL2

We present a novel technique for combining statistical machine learning for proof-pattern recognition with symbolic methods for lemma discovery. The resulting tool, ACL2(ml), gathers proof statistics and uses statistical pattern-recognition to pre-processes data from libraries, and then suggests auxiliary lemmas in new proofs by analogy with already seen examples. This paper presents the implementation of ACL2(ml) alongside theoretical descriptions of the proof-pattern recognition and lemma discovery methods involved in it

CoLoR: a Coq library on well-founded rewrite relations and its application to the automated verification of termination certificates

Termination is an important property of programs; notably required for programs formulated in proof assistants. It is a very active subject of research in the Turing-complete formalism of term rewriting systems, where many methods and tools have been developed over the years to address this problem. Ensuring reliability of those tools is therefore an important issue. In this paper we present a library formalizing important results of the theory of well-founded (rewrite) relations in the proof assistant Coq. We also present its application to the automated verification of termination certificates, as produced by termination tools

Size-Change Termination as a Contract

Termination is an important but undecidable program property, which has led to a large body of work on static methods for conservatively predicting or enforcing termination. One such method is the size-change termination approach of Lee, Jones, and Ben-Amram, which operates in two phases: (1) abstract programs into "size-change graphs," and (2) check these graphs for the size-change property: the existence of paths that lead to infinite decreasing sequences. We transpose these two phases with an operational semantics that accounts for the run-time enforcement of the size-change property, postponing (or entirely avoiding) program abstraction. This choice has two key consequences: (1) size-change termination can be checked at run-time and (2) termination can be rephrased as a safety property analyzed using existing methods for systematic abstraction. We formulate run-time size-change checks as contracts in the style of Findler and Felleisen. The result compliments existing contracts that enforce partial correctness specifications to obtain contracts for total correctness. Our approach combines the robustness of the size-change principle for termination with the precise information available at run-time. It has tunable overhead and can check for nontermination without the conservativeness necessary in static checking. To obtain a sound and computable termination analysis, we apply existing abstract interpretation techniques directly to the operational semantics, avoiding the need for custom abstractions for termination. The resulting analyzer is competitive with with existing, purpose-built analyzers

A Mechanized Proof of a Textbook Type Unification Algorithm

Unification is the core of type inference algorithms for modern functional programming languages, like Haskell and SML. As a first step towards a formalization of a type inference algorithm for such programming languages, we present a formalization in Coq of a type unification algorithm that follows classic algorithms presented in programming language textbooks. We also report on the use of such formalization to build a correct type inference algorithm for the simply typed λ-calculus

Friends with benefits: implementing corecursion in foundational proof assistants

We introduce AmiCo, a tool that extends a proof assistant, Isabelle/HOL, with flexible function definitions well beyond primitive corecursion. All definitions are certified by the assistant’s inference kernel to guard against inconsistencies. A central notion is that of friends: functions that preserve the productivity of their arguments and that are allowed in corecursive call contexts. As new friends are registered, corecursion benefits by becoming more expressive. We describe this process and its implementation, from the user’s specification to the synthesis of a higher-order definition to the registration of a friend. We show some substantial case studies where our approach makes a difference

Friends with benefits: implementing corecursion in foundational proof assistants

We introduce AmiCo, a tool that extends a proof assistant, Isabelle/HOL, with flexible function definitions well beyond primitive corecursion. All definitions are certified by the assistant’s inference kernel to guard against inconsistencies. A central notion is that of friends: functions that preserve the productivity of their arguments and that are allowed in corecursive call contexts. As new friends are registered, corecursion benefits by becoming more expressive. We describe this process and its implementation, from the user’s specification to the synthesis of a higher-order definition to the registration of a friend. We show some substantial case studies where our approach makes a difference