Strategic Issues, Problems and Challenges in Inductive Theorem Proving

Abstract(Automated) Inductive Theorem Proving (ITP) is a challenging field in automated reasoning and theorem proving. Typically, (Automated) Theorem Proving (TP) refers to methods, techniques and tools for automatically proving general (most often first-order) theorems. Nowadays, the field of TP has reached a certain degree of maturity and powerful TP systems are widely available and used. The situation with ITP is strikingly different, in the sense that proving inductive theorems in an essentially automatic way still is a very challenging task, even for the most advanced existing ITP systems. Both in general TP and in ITP, strategies for guiding the proof search process are of fundamental importance, in automated as well as in interactive or mixed settings. In the paper we will analyze and discuss the most important strategic and proof search issues in ITP, compare ITP with TP, and argue why ITP is in a sense much more challenging. More generally, we will systematically isolate, investigate and classify the main problems and challenges in ITP w.r.t. automation, on different levels and from different points of views. Finally, based on this analysis we will present some theses about the state of the art in the field, possible criteria for what could be considered as substantial progress, and promising lines of research for the future, towards (more) automated ITP

MU-TERM: Verify Termination Properties Automatically (System Description)

[EN] We report on the new version of mu-term, a tool for proving termination properties of variants of rewrite systems, including conditional, context-sensitive, equational, and order-sorted rewrite systems. We follow a unified logic-based approach to describe rewriting computations. The automatic generation of logical models for suitable first-order theories and formulas provide a common basis to implement the proofs.Supported by EU (FEDER), and projects RTI2018-094403-B-C32,PROMETEO/ 2019/098, and SP20180225. Also by INCIBE program "Ayudas para la excelencia de los equipos de investigación avanzada en ciberseguridad" (Raul Gutiérrez).Gutiérrez Gil, R.; Lucas Alba, S. (2020). MU-TERM: Verify Termination Properties Automatically (System Description). Springer Nature. 436-447. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51054-1_28S436447Alarcón, B., et al.: Improving context-sensitive dependency pairs. In: Cervesato, I., Veith, H., Voronkov, A. (eds.) LPAR 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5330, pp. 636–651. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89439-1_44Alarcón, B., Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Context-sensitive dependency pairs. Inf. Comput. 208(8), 922–968 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ic.2010.03.003Alarcón, B., Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S., Navarro-Marset, R.: Proving termination properties with mu-term. In: Johnson, M., Pavlovic, D. (eds.) AMAST 2010. LNCS, vol. 6486, pp. 201–208. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17796-5_12Alarcón, B., Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: A dependency pair framework for $${A} \vee {C}$$-termination. In: Ölveczky, P.C. (ed.) WRLA 2010. LNCS, vol. 6381, pp. 35–51. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16310-4_4Arts, T., Giesl, J.: Termination of term rewriting using dependency pairs. Theor. Comput. Sci. 236(1–2), 133–178 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3975(99)00207-8Clavel, M., et al.: All About Maude - A High-Performance Logical Framework. LNCS, vol. 4350. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71999-1Endrullis, J., Waldmann, J., Zantema, H.: Matrix interpretations for proving termination of term rewriting. J. Autom. Reasoning 40(2–3), 195–220 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-007-9087-9Giesl, J., Arts, T.: Verification of erlang processes by dependency pairs. Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. Comput. 12(1/2), 39–72 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002000100063Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P.: Proving and disproving termination of higher-order functions. In: Gramlich, B. (ed.) FroCoS 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3717, pp. 216–231. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/11559306_12Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P., Falke, S.: Mechanizing and improving dependency pairs. J. Autom. Reasoning 37(3), 155–203 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-006-9057-7Goguen, J.A., Meseguer, J.: Order-sorted algebra I: equational deduction for multiple inheritance, overloading, exceptions and partial operations. Theor. Comput. Sci. 105(2), 217–273 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3975(92)90302-VGutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Function calls at frozen positions in termination of context-sensitive rewriting. In: Martí-Oliet, N., Ölveczky, P.C., Talcott, C. (eds.) Logic, Rewriting, and Concurrency. LNCS, vol. 9200, pp. 311–330. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23165-5_15Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Proving termination in the context-sensitive dependency pair framework. In: Ölveczky, P.C. (ed.) WRLA 2010. LNCS, vol. 6381, pp. 18–34. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16310-4_3Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Automatic generation of logical models with AGES. In: Fontaine, P. (ed.) CADE 2019. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 11716, pp. 287–299. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29436-6_17Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Automatically proving and disproving feasibility conditions. In: Peltier, N., Sofronie-Stokkermans, V. (eds.) IJCAR 2020. LNAI, vol. 12167, pp. 416–435. Springer, Heidelberg (2020)Lucas, S.: Context-sensitive computations in functional and functional logic programs. J. Funct. Log. Program. 1998(1), 1–61 (1998). http://danae.uni-muenster.de/lehre/kuchen/JFLP/articles/1998/A98-01/A98-01.htmlLucas, S.: Context-sensitive rewriting strategies. Inf. Comput. 178(1), 294–343 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1006/inco.2002.3176Lucas, S.: Proving semantic properties as first-order satisfiability. Artif. Intell. 277 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2019.103174Lucas, S., Gutiérrez, R.: Automatic synthesis of logical models for order-sorted first-order theories. J. Autom. Reasoning 60(4), 465–501 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-017-9419-3Lucas, S., Gutiérrez, R.: Use of logical models for proving infeasibility in term rewriting. Inf. Process. Lett. 136, 90–95 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2018.04.002Lucas, S., Marché, C., Meseguer, J.: Operational termination of conditional term rewriting systems. Inf. Process. Lett. 95(4), 446–453 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2005.05.002Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Order-sorted dependency pairs. In: Antoy, S., Albert, E. (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming, 15–17 July 2008, Valencia, Spain, pp. 108–119. ACM (2008). https://doi.org/10.1145/1389449.1389463Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Dependency pairs for proving termination properties of conditional term rewriting systems. J. Log. Algebraic Methods Program. 86(1), 236–268 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2016.03.003Lucas, S., Meseguer, J., Gutiérrez, R.: The 2D dependency pair framework for conditional rewrite systems. Part I: Definition and basic processors. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 96, 74–106 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2018.04.002Lucas, S., Meseguer, J., Gutiérrez, R.: The 2D dependency pair framework for conditional rewrite systems—part II: advanced processors and implementation techniques. J. Autom. Reasoning (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-020-09542-3McCune, W.: Prover9 & Mace4. Technical report (2005–2010). http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mccune/prover9/Ohlebusch, E.: Advanced Topics in Term Rewriting. Springer (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3661-8 . http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/book/978-0-387-95250-5Ölveczky, P.C., Lysne, O.: Order-sorted termination: the unsorted way. In: Hanus, M., Rodríguez-Artalejo, M. (eds.) ALP 1996. LNCS, vol. 1139, pp. 92–106. 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On the Most Suitable Axiomatization of Signed Integers

Part 4: Regular PapersInternational audienceThe standard mathematical definition of signed integers, based on set theory, is not well-adapted to the needs of computer science. For this reason, many formal specification languages and theorem provers have designed alternative definitions of signed integers based on term algebras , by extending the Peano-style construction of unsigned naturals using "zero" and "succ" to the case of signed integers. We compare the various approaches used in CADP, CASL, Coq, Isabelle/HOL, KIV, Maude, mCRL2, PSF, SMT-LIB, TLA+, etc. according to objective criteria and suggest an "optimal" definition of signed integers

Derivational Complexity and Context-Sensitive Rewriting

[EN] Context-sensitive rewriting is a restriction of rewriting where reduction steps are allowed on specific arguments mu(f) subset of {1, ..., k} of k-ary function symbols f only. Terms which cannot be further rewritten in this way are called mu-normal forms. For left-linear term rewriting systems (TRSs), the so-called normalization via mu-normalization procedure provides a systematic way to obtain normal forms by the stepwise computation and combination of intermediate mu-normal forms. In this paper, we show how to obtain bounds on the derivational complexity of computations using this procedure by using bounds on the derivational complexity of context-sensitive rewriting. Two main applications are envisaged: Normalization via mu-normalization can be used with non-terminating TRSs where the procedure still terminates; on the other hand, it can be used to improve on bounds of derivational complexity of terminating TRSs as it discards many rewritings.Partially supported by the EU (FEDER), and projects RTI2018-094403-B-C32 and PROMETEO/2019/098.Lucas Alba, S. (2021). Derivational Complexity and Context-Sensitive Rewriting. Journal of Automated Reasoning. 65(8):1191-1229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-021-09603-11191122965

Modularity and Combination of Associative Commutative Congruence Closure Algorithms enriched with Semantic Properties

Algorithms for computing congruence closure of ground equations over uninterpreted symbols and interpreted symbols satisfying associativity and commutativity (AC) properties are proposed. The algorithms are based on a framework for computing a congruence closure by abstracting nonflat terms by constants as proposed first in Kapur's congruence closure algorithm (RTA97). The framework is general, flexible, and has been extended also to develop congruence closure algorithms for the cases when associative-commutative function symbols can have additional properties including idempotency, nilpotency, identities, cancellativity and group properties as well as their various combinations. Algorithms are modular; their correctness and termination proofs are simple, exploiting modularity. Unlike earlier algorithms, the proposed algorithms neither rely on complex AC compatible well-founded orderings on nonvariable terms nor need to use the associative-commutative unification and extension rules in completion for generating canonical rewrite systems for congruence closures. They are particularly suited for integrating into the Satisfiability modulo Theories (SMT) solvers. A new way to view Groebner basis algorithm for polynomial ideals with integer coefficients as a combination of the congruence closures over the AC symbol * with the identity 1 and the congruence closure over an Abelian group with + is outlined