Generic Encodings of Constructor Rewriting Systems

Rewriting is a formalism widely used in computer science and mathematical logic. The classical formalism has been extended, in the context of functional languages, with an order over the rules and, in the context of rewrite based languages, with the negation over patterns. We propose in this paper a concise and clear algorithm computing the difference over patterns which can be used to define generic encodings of constructor term rewriting systems with negation and order into classical term rewriting systems. As a direct consequence, established methods used for term rewriting systems can be applied to analyze properties of the extended systems. The approach can also be seen as a generic compiler which targets any language providing basic pattern matching primitives. The formalism provides also a new method for deciding if a set of patterns subsumes a given pattern and thus, for checking the presence of useless patterns or the completeness of a set of patterns.Comment: Added appendix with proofs and extended example

Generic Encodings of Constructor Rewriting Systems

International audienceRewriting is a formalism widely used in computer science and mathematical logic. The classical formalism has been extended, in the context of functional languages, with an order over the rules and, in the context of rewrite based languages, with the negation over patterns. We propose in this paper a concise and clear algorithm computing the difference over patterns which can be used to define generic encodings of constructor term rewriting systems with negation and order into classical term rewriting systems. As a direct consequence, established methods used for term rewriting systems can be applied to analyze properties of the extended systems. The approach can also be seen as a generic compiler which targets any language providing basic pattern matching primitives. The formalism provides also a new method for deciding if a set of patterns subsumes a given pattern and thus, for checking the presence of useless patterns or the completeness of a set of patterns

Analyse statique de transformations pour l'élimination de motifs

Program transformation is an extremely common practice in computer science. From compilation to tests generation, through many approaches of code analysis and formal verification of programs, it is a process that is both ubiquitous and critical to properly functioning programs and information systems. This thesis proposes to study the program transformations mechanisms in order to express and verify syntactical guarantees on the behaviour of these transformations and on their results.Giving a characterisation of the shape of terms returned by such a transformation is, indeed, a common approach to the formal verification of programs. In order to express some properties often used by this type of approaches, we propose in this thesis a formalism inspired by themodel of compilation passes, which are used to describe the general compilation of a program as a sequence of minimal transformations, and based on the notions of pattern matching and term rewriting.This formalism relies on an annotation mechanism of function symbols in order to express a set of specifications describing the behaviours of the associated functions. We then propose a static analysis method in order to check that a transformation, expressed as a term rewritesystem, actually verifies its specifications.La transformation de programmes est une pratique très courante dans le domaine des sciences informatiques. De la compilation à la génération de test en passant par de nombreuses approches d’analyse de codes et de vérification formelle des programmes, c’est un procédé qui est à la fois omniprésent et crucial au bon fonctionnement des programmes et systèmes informatiques. Cette thèse propose une étude formelle des procédures de transformation de programmes dans le but d’exprimer et de garantir des propriétés syntaxiques sur le comportement et les résultats d’unetelle transformation.Dans le contexte de la vérification formelle des programmes, il est en effet souvent nécessaire de pouvoir caractériser la forme des termes obtenus par réduction suivant une telle transformation. En s’inspirant du modèle de passes de compilation, qui décrivent un séquençage de la compilation d’un programme en étapes de transformation minimales n’affectant qu’un petit nombre des constructions du langage, on introduit, dans cette thèse, un formalisme basé sur les notions de filtrage par motif et de réécriture permettant de décrire certaines propriétés couramment induites par ce type de transformations.Le formalisme proposé se repose sur un système d’annotations des symboles de fonction décrivant une spécification du comportement attendu des fonctions associées. On présente alors une méthode d’analyse statique permettant de vérifier que les transformations étudiées, exprimées par un système de réécriture, satisfont en effet ces spécifications