Parity to Safety in Polynomial Time for Pushdown and Collapsible Pushdown Systems

We give a direct polynomial-time reduction from parity games played over the configuration graphs of collapsible pushdown systems to safety games played over the same class of graphs. That a polynomial-time reduction would exist was known since both problems are complete for the same complexity class. Coming up with a direct reduction, however, has been an open problem. Our solution to the puzzle brings together a number of techniques for pushdown games and adds three new ones. This work contributes to a recent trend of liveness to safety reductions which allow the advanced state-of-the-art in safety checking to be used for more expressive specifications

Parity to safety in polynomial time for pushdown and collapsible pushdown systems

We give a direct polynomial-time reduction from parity games played over the configuration graphs of collapsible pushdown systems to safety games played over the same class of graphs. That a polynomial-time reduction would exist was known since both problems are complete for the same complexity class. Coming up with a direct reduction, however, has been an open problem. Our solution to the puzzle brings together a number of techniques for pushdown games and adds three new ones. This work contributes to a recent trend of liveness to safety reductions which allow the advanced state-of-the-art in safety checking to be used for more expressive specifications

Variants of Collapsible Pushdown Systems

We analyze the relationship between three ways of generating trees using collapsible pushdown systems (CPS\u27s): using deterministic CPS\u27s, nondeterministic CPS\u27s, and deterministic word-accepting CPS\u27s. We prove that (for each level of the CPS and each input alphabet) the three classes of trees are equal. The nontrivial translations increase n-1 times exponentially the size of the level-n CPS. The same results stay true if we restrict ourselves to higher-order pushdown systems without collapse. As a second contribution we prove that the hierarchy of word languages recognized by nondeterministic CPS\u27s is infinite. This is a consequence of a lemma which bounds the length of the shortest accepting run. It also implies that the hierarchy of epsilon-closures of configuration graphs is infinite (which was already known). As a side effect we obtain a new algorithm for the reachability problem for CPS\u27s; it has the same complexity as previously known algorithms

Collapsible Pushdown Parity Games

International audienceThis paper studies a large class of two-player perfect-information turn-based parity games on infinite graphs, namely those generated by collapsible pushdown automata. The main motivation for studying these games comes from the connections from collapsible pushdown automata and higher-order recursion schemes, both models being equi-expressive for generating infinite trees. Our main result is to establish the decidability of such games and to provide an effective representation of the winning region as well as of a winning strategy. Thus, the results obtained here provide all necessary tools for an in-depth study of logical properties of trees generated by collapsible pushdown automata/recursion schemes

Higher-Order Model Checking Step by Step

We show a new simple algorithm that solves the model-checking problem for recursion schemes: check whether the tree generated by a given higher-order recursion scheme is accepted by a given alternating parity automaton. The algorithm amounts to a procedure that transforms a recursion scheme of order n to a recursion scheme of order n-1, preserving acceptance, and increasing the size only exponentially. After repeating the procedure n times, we obtain a recursion scheme of order 0, for which the problem boils down to solving a finite parity game. Since the size grows exponentially at each step, the overall complexity is n-EXPTIME, which is known to be optimal. More precisely, the transformation is linear in the size of the recursion scheme, assuming that the arity of employed nonterminals and the size of the automaton are bounded by a constant; this results in an FPT algorithm for the model-checking problem. Our transformation is a generalization of a previous transformation of the author (2020), working for reachability automata in place of parity automata. The step-by-step approach can be opposed to previous algorithms solving the considered problem "in one step", being compulsorily more complicated

Playing with Trees and Logic

This document proposes an overview of my research sinc

Recursion Schemes and Logical Reflection

International audienceLet R be a class of generators of node-labelled infinite trees, and L be a logical language for describing correctness properties of these trees. Given r in R and phi in L, we say that r_phi is a phi-reflection of r just if (i) r and r_phi generate the same underlying tree, and (ii) suppose a node u of the tree t(r) generated by r has label f, then the label of the node u of t(r_phi) is f* if u in t(r) satisfies phi; it is f otherwise. Thus if t(r) is the computation tree of a program r, we may regard r_phi as a transform of r that can internally observe its behaviour against a specification phi. We say that R is (constructively) reflective w.r.t. L just if there is an algorithm that transforms a given pair (r,phi) to r_phi. In this paper, we prove that higher-order recursion schemes are reflective w.r.t. both modal mu-calculus and monadic second order (MSO) logic. To obtain this result, we give the first characterisation of the winning regions of parity games over the transition graphs of collapsible pushdown automata (CPDA): they are regular sets defined by a new class of automata. (Order-n recursion schemes are equi-expressive with order-n CPDA for generating trees.) As a corollary, we show that these schemes are closed under the operation of MSO-interpretation followed by tree unfolding a la Caucal

Recursion Schemes and Logical Reflection

International audienceLet R be a class of generators of node-labelled infinite trees, and L be a logical language for describing correctness properties of these trees. Given r in R and phi in L, we say that r_phi is a phi-reflection of r just if (i) r and r_phi generate the same underlying tree, and (ii) suppose a node u of the tree t(r) generated by r has label f, then the label of the node u of t(r_phi) is f* if u in t(r) satisfies phi; it is f otherwise. Thus if t(r) is the computation tree of a program r, we may regard r_phi as a transform of r that can internally observe its behaviour against a specification phi. We say that R is (constructively) reflective w.r.t. L just if there is an algorithm that transforms a given pair (r,phi) to r_phi. In this paper, we prove that higher-order recursion schemes are reflective w.r.t. both modal mu-calculus and monadic second order (MSO) logic. To obtain this result, we give the first characterisation of the winning regions of parity games over the transition graphs of collapsible pushdown automata (CPDA): they are regular sets defined by a new class of automata. (Order-n recursion schemes are equi-expressive with order-n CPDA for generating trees.) As a corollary, we show that these schemes are closed under the operation of MSO-interpretation followed by tree unfolding a la Caucal

Higher-Order Nonemptiness Step by Step

We show a new simple algorithm that checks whether a given higher-order grammar generates a nonempty language of trees. The algorithm amounts to a procedure that transforms a grammar of order n to a grammar of order n-1, preserving nonemptiness, and increasing the size only exponentially. After repeating the procedure n times, we obtain a grammar of order 0, whose nonemptiness can be easily checked. Since the size grows exponentially at each step, the overall complexity is n-EXPTIME, which is known to be optimal. More precisely, the transformation (and hence the whole algorithm) is linear in the size of the grammar, assuming that the arity of employed nonterminals is bounded by a constant. The same algorithm allows to check whether an infinite tree generated by a higher-order recursion scheme is accepted by an alternating safety (or reachability) automaton, because this question can be reduced to the nonemptiness problem by taking a product of the recursion scheme with the automaton. A proof of correctness of the algorithm is formalised in the proof assistant Coq. Our transformation is motivated by a similar transformation of Asada and Kobayashi (2020) changing a word grammar of order n to a tree grammar of order n-1. The step-by-step approach can be opposed to previous algorithms solving the nonemptiness problem "in one step", being compulsorily more complicated

Saturation-Based Model Checking of Higher-Order Recursion Schemes

Model checking of higher-order recursion schemes (HORS) has recently been studied extensively and applied to higher-order program verification. Despite recent efforts, obtaining a scalable model checker for HORS remains a big challenge. We propose a new model checking algorithm for HORS, which combines two previous, independent approaches to higher-order model checking. Like previous type-based algorithms for HORS, it directly analyzes HORS and outputs intersection types as a certificate, but like Broadbent et al.\u27s saturation algorithm for collapsible pushdown systems (CPDS), it propagates information backward, in the sense that it starts with target configurations and iteratively computes their pre-images. We have implemented the new algorithm and confirmed that the prototype often outperforms TRECS and CSHORe, the state-of-the-art model checkers for HORS