Non-termination using Regular Languages

We describe a method for proving non-looping non-termination, that is, of term rewriting systems that do not admit looping reductions. As certificates of non-termination, we employ regular (tree) automata.Comment: Published at International Workshop on Termination 201

Proving Looping and Non-Looping Non-Termination by Finite Automata

A new technique is presented to prove non-termination of term rewriting. The basic idea is to find a non-empty regular language of terms that is closed under rewriting and does not contain normal forms. It is automated by representing the language by a tree automaton with a fixed number of states, and expressing the mentioned requirements in a SAT formula. Satisfiability of this formula implies non-termination. Our approach succeeds for many examples where all earlier techniques fail, for instance for the S-rule from combinatory logic

Towards Static Analysis of Functional Programs using Tree Automata Completion

This paper presents the first step of a wider research effort to apply tree automata completion to the static analysis of functional programs. Tree Automata Completion is a family of techniques for computing or approximating the set of terms reachable by a rewriting relation. The completion algorithm we focus on is parameterized by a set E of equations controlling the precision of the approximation and influencing its termination. For completion to be used as a static analysis, the first step is to guarantee its termination. In this work, we thus give a sufficient condition on E and T(F) for completion algorithm to always terminate. In the particular setting of functional programs, this condition can be relaxed into a condition on E and T(C) (terms built on the set of constructors) that is closer to what is done in the field of static analysis, where abstractions are performed on data.Comment: Proceedings of WRLA'14. 201

Certifying Confluence of Almost Orthogonal CTRSs via Exact Tree Automata Completion

Suzuki et al. showed that properly oriented, right-stable, orthogonal, and oriented conditional term rewrite systems with extra variables in right-hand sides are confluent. We present our Isabelle/HOL formalization of this result, including two generalizations. On the one hand, we relax proper orientedness and orthogonality to extended proper orientedness and almost orthogonality modulo infeasibility, as suggested by Suzuki et al. On the other hand, we further loosen the requirements of the latter, enabling more powerful methods for proving infeasibility of conditional critical pairs. Furthermore, we formalized a construction by Jacquemard that employs exact tree automata completion for non-reachability analysis and apply it to certify infeasibility of conditional critical pairs. Combining these two results and extending the conditional confluence checker ConCon accordingly, we are able to automatically prove and certify confluence of an important class of conditional term rewrite systems

Proving non-termination by finite automata

A new technique is presented to prove non-termination of term rewriting. The basic idea is to find a non-empty regular language of terms that is closed under rewriting and does not contain normal forms. It is automated by representing the language by a tree automaton with a fixed number of states, and expressing the mentioned requirements in a SAT formula. Satisfiability of this formula implies non-termination. Our approach succeeds for many examples where all earlier techniques fail, for instance for the S-rule from combinatory logic

The Certification Problem Format

We provide an overview of CPF, the certification problem format, and explain some design decisions. Whereas CPF was originally invented to combine three different formats for termination proofs into a single one, in the meanwhile proofs for several other properties of term rewrite systems are also expressible: like confluence, complexity, and completion. As a consequence, the format is already supported by several tools and certifiers. Its acceptance is also demonstrated in international competitions: the certified tracks of both the termination and the confluence competition utilized CPF as exchange format between automated tools and trusted certifiers.Comment: In Proceedings UITP 2014, arXiv:1410.785

Certification of Complexity Proofs using CeTA

Nowadays certification is widely employed by automated termination tools for term rewriting, where certifiers support most available techniques. In complexity analysis, the situation is quite different. Although tools support certification in principle, current certifiers implement only the most basic technique, namely, suitably tamed versions of reduction orders. As a consequence, only a small fraction of the proofs generated by state-of-the-art complexity tools can be certified. To improve upon this situation, we formalized a framework for the certification of modular complexity proofs and incorporated it into CeTA. We report on this extension and present the newly supported techniques (match-bounds, weak dependency pairs, dependency tuples, usable rules, and usable replacement maps), resulting in a significant increase in the number of certifiable complexity proofs. During our work we detected conflicts in theoretical results as well as bugs in existing complexity tools