507 research outputs found
Adding modular predicates to first-order fragments
We investigate the decidability of the definability problem for fragments of
first order logic over finite words enriched with modular predicates. Our
approach aims toward the most generic statements that we could achieve, which
successfully covers the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first order logic
and some of its fragments. We obtain that deciding this problem for each level
of the alternation hierarchy of both first order logic and its two-variable
fragment when equipped with all regular numerical predicates is not harder than
deciding it for the corresponding level equipped with only the linear order and
the successor. For two-variable fragments we also treat the case of the
signature containing only the order and modular predicates.Relying on some
recent results, this proves the decidability for each level of the alternation
hierarchy of the two-variable first order fragmentwhile in the case of the
first order logic the question remains open for levels greater than two.The
main ingredients of the proofs are syntactic transformations of first order
formulas as well as the algebraic framework of finite categories
Bounded Quantifier Instantiation for Checking Inductive Invariants
We consider the problem of checking whether a proposed invariant
expressed in first-order logic with quantifier alternation is inductive, i.e.
preserved by a piece of code. While the problem is undecidable, modern SMT
solvers can sometimes solve it automatically. However, they employ powerful
quantifier instantiation methods that may diverge, especially when is
not preserved. A notable difficulty arises due to counterexamples of infinite
size.
This paper studies Bounded-Horizon instantiation, a natural method for
guaranteeing the termination of SMT solvers. The method bounds the depth of
terms used in the quantifier instantiation process. We show that this method is
surprisingly powerful for checking quantified invariants in uninterpreted
domains. Furthermore, by producing partial models it can help the user diagnose
the case when is not inductive, especially when the underlying reason
is the existence of infinite counterexamples.
Our main technical result is that Bounded-Horizon is at least as powerful as
instrumentation, which is a manual method to guarantee convergence of the
solver by modifying the program so that it admits a purely universal invariant.
We show that with a bound of 1 we can simulate a natural class of
instrumentations, without the need to modify the code and in a fully automatic
way. We also report on a prototype implementation on top of Z3, which we used
to verify several examples by Bounded-Horizon of bound 1
Covering and separation for logical fragments with modular predicates
For every class of word languages, one may associate a decision
problem called -separation. Given two regular languages, it asks
whether there exists a third language in containing the first
language, while being disjoint from the second one. Usually, finding an
algorithm deciding -separation yields a deep insight on
.
We consider classes defined by fragments of first-order logic. Given such a
fragment, one may often build a larger class by adding more predicates to its
signature. In the paper, we investigate the operation of enriching signatures
with modular predicates. Our main theorem is a generic transfer result for this
construction. Informally, we show that when a logical fragment is equipped with
a signature containing the successor predicate, separation for the stronger
logic enriched with modular predicates reduces to separation for the original
logic. This result actually applies to a more general decision problem, called
the covering problem
Tree Languages Defined in First-Order Logic with One Quantifier Alternation
We study tree languages that can be defined in \Delta_2 . These are tree
languages definable by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is forall
exists, and simultaneously by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is
. For the quantifier free part we consider two signatures, either the
descendant relation alone or together with the lexicographical order relation
on nodes. We provide an effective characterization of tree and forest languages
definable in \Delta_2 . This characterization is in terms of algebraic
equations. Over words, the class of word languages definable in \Delta_2 forms
a robust class, which was given an effective algebraic characterization by Pin
and Weil
Languages of Dot-depth One over Infinite Words
Over finite words, languages of dot-depth one are expressively complete for
alternation-free first-order logic. This fragment is also known as the Boolean
closure of existential first-order logic. Here, the atomic formulas comprise
order, successor, minimum, and maximum predicates. Knast (1983) has shown that
it is decidable whether a language has dot-depth one. We extend Knast's result
to infinite words. In particular, we describe the class of languages definable
in alternation-free first-order logic over infinite words, and we give an
effective characterization of this fragment. This characterization has two
components. The first component is identical to Knast's algebraic property for
finite words and the second component is a topological property, namely being a
Boolean combination of Cantor sets.
As an intermediate step we consider finite and infinite words simultaneously.
We then obtain the results for infinite words as well as for finite words as
special cases. In particular, we give a new proof of Knast's Theorem on
languages of dot-depth one over finite words.Comment: Presented at LICS 201
The parameterized space complexity of model-checking bounded variable first-order logic
The parameterized model-checking problem for a class of first-order sentences
(queries) asks to decide whether a given sentence from the class holds true in
a given relational structure (database); the parameter is the length of the
sentence. We study the parameterized space complexity of the model-checking
problem for queries with a bounded number of variables. For each bound on the
quantifier alternation rank the problem becomes complete for the corresponding
level of what we call the tree hierarchy, a hierarchy of parameterized
complexity classes defined via space bounded alternating machines between
parameterized logarithmic space and fixed-parameter tractable time. We observe
that a parameterized logarithmic space model-checker for existential bounded
variable queries would allow to improve Savitch's classical simulation of
nondeterministic logarithmic space in deterministic space .
Further, we define a highly space efficient model-checker for queries with a
bounded number of variables and bounded quantifier alternation rank. We study
its optimality under the assumption that Savitch's Theorem is optimal
Two-Way Unary Temporal Logic over Trees
We consider a temporal logic EF+F^-1 for unranked, unordered finite trees.
The logic has two operators: EF\phi, which says "in some proper descendant \phi
holds", and F^-1\phi, which says "in some proper ancestor \phi holds". We
present an algorithm for deciding if a regular language of unranked finite
trees can be expressed in EF+F^-1. The algorithm uses a characterization
expressed in terms of forest algebras.Comment: 29 pages. Journal version of a LICS 07 pape
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