7,552 research outputs found
(Un)Decidability Results for Word Equations with Length and Regular Expression Constraints
We prove several decidability and undecidability results for the
satisfiability and validity problems for languages that can express solutions
to word equations with length constraints. The atomic formulas over this
language are equality over string terms (word equations), linear inequality
over the length function (length constraints), and membership in regular sets.
These questions are important in logic, program analysis, and formal
verification. Variants of these questions have been studied for many decades by
mathematicians. More recently, practical satisfiability procedures (aka SMT
solvers) for these formulas have become increasingly important in the context
of security analysis for string-manipulating programs such as web applications.
We prove three main theorems. First, we give a new proof of undecidability
for the validity problem for the set of sentences written as a forall-exists
quantifier alternation applied to positive word equations. A corollary of this
undecidability result is that this set is undecidable even with sentences with
at most two occurrences of a string variable. Second, we consider Boolean
combinations of quantifier-free formulas constructed out of word equations and
length constraints. We show that if word equations can be converted to a solved
form, a form relevant in practice, then the satisfiability problem for Boolean
combinations of word equations and length constraints is decidable. Third, we
show that the satisfiability problem for quantifier-free formulas over word
equations in regular solved form, length constraints, and the membership
predicate over regular expressions is also decidable.Comment: Invited Paper at ADDCT Workshop 2013 (co-located with CADE 2013
On Equivalence and Canonical Forms in the LF Type Theory
Decidability of definitional equality and conversion of terms into canonical
form play a central role in the meta-theory of a type-theoretic logical
framework. Most studies of definitional equality are based on a confluent,
strongly-normalizing notion of reduction. Coquand has considered a different
approach, directly proving the correctness of a practical equivalance algorithm
based on the shape of terms. Neither approach appears to scale well to richer
languages with unit types or subtyping, and neither directly addresses the
problem of conversion to canonical.
In this paper we present a new, type-directed equivalence algorithm for the
LF type theory that overcomes the weaknesses of previous approaches. The
algorithm is practical, scales to richer languages, and yields a new notion of
canonical form sufficient for adequate encodings of logical systems. The
algorithm is proved complete by a Kripke-style logical relations argument
similar to that suggested by Coquand. Crucially, both the algorithm itself and
the logical relations rely only on the shapes of types, ignoring dependencies
on terms.Comment: 41 page
The FO^2 alternation hierarchy is decidable
We consider the two-variable fragment FO^2[<] of first-order logic over
finite words. Numerous characterizations of this class are known. Th\'erien and
Wilke have shown that it is decidable whether a given regular language is
definable in FO^2[<]. From a practical point of view, as shown by Weis, FO^2[<]
is interesting since its satisfiability problem is in NP. Restricting the
number of quantifier alternations yields an infinite hierarchy inside the class
of FO^2[<]-definable languages. We show that each level of this hierarchy is
decidable. For this purpose, we relate each level of the hierarchy with a
decidable variety of finite monoids. Our result implies that there are many
different ways of climbing up the FO^2[<]-quantifier alternation hierarchy:
deterministic and co-deterministic products, Mal'cev products with definite and
reverse definite semigroups, iterated block products with J-trivial monoids,
and some inductively defined omega-term identities. A combinatorial tool in the
process of ascension is that of condensed rankers, a refinement of the rankers
of Weis and Immerman and the turtle programs of Schwentick, Th\'erien, and
Vollmer
On the Termination of Linear and Affine Programs over the Integers
The termination problem for affine programs over the integers was left open
in\cite{Braverman}. For more that a decade, it has been considered and cited as
a challenging open problem. To the best of our knowledge, we present here the
most complete response to this issue: we show that termination for affine
programs over Z is decidable under an assumption holding for almost all affine
programs, except for an extremely small class of zero Lesbegue measure. We use
the notion of asymptotically non-terminating initial variable values} (ANT, for
short) for linear loop programs over Z. Those values are directly associated to
initial variable values for which the corresponding program does not terminate.
We reduce the termination problem of linear affine programs over the integers
to the emptiness check of a specific ANT set of initial variable values. For
this class of linear or affine programs, we prove that the corresponding ANT
set is a semi-linear space and we provide a powerful computational methods
allowing the automatic generation of these sets. Moreover, we are able to
address the conditional termination problem too. In other words, by taking ANT
set complements, we obtain a precise under-approximation of the set of inputs
for which the program does terminate.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1407.455
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