Matching concepts across HOL libraries

Many proof assistant libraries contain formalizations of the same mathematical concepts. The concepts are often introduced (defined) in different ways, but the properties that they have, and are in turn formalized, are the same. For the basic concepts, like natural numbers, matching them between libraries is often straightforward, because of mathematical naming conventions. However, for more advanced concepts, finding similar formalizations in different libraries is a non-trivial task even for an expert. In this paper we investigate automatic discovery of similar concepts across libraries of proof assistants. We propose an approach for normalizing properties of concepts in formal libraries and a number of similarity measures. We evaluate the approach on HOL based proof assistants HOL4, HOL Light and Isabelle/HOL, discovering 398 pairs of isomorphic constants and types

Sharing HOL4 and HOL Light proof knowledge

New proof assistant developments often involve concepts similar to already formalized ones. When proving their properties, a human can often take inspiration from the existing formalized proofs available in other provers or libraries. In this paper we propose and evaluate a number of methods, which strengthen proof automation by learning from proof libraries of different provers. Certain conjectures can be proved directly from the dependencies induced by similar proofs in the other library. Even if exact correspondences are not found, learning-reasoning systems can make use of the association between proved theorems and their characteristics to predict the relevant premises. Such external help can be further combined with internal advice. We evaluate the proposed knowledge-sharing methods by reproving the HOL Light and HOL4 standard libraries. The learning-reasoning system HOL(y)Hammer, whose single best strategy could automatically find proofs for 30% of the HOL Light problems, can prove 40% with the knowledge from HOL4

Structured Formal Development in Isabelle

General purpose theorem provers provide advanced facilities for proving properties about specifications, and may therefore be a valuable tool in formal program development. However, these provers generally lack many of the useful structuring mechanisms found in functional programming or specification languages. This paper presents a constructive approach to adding theory morphisms and parametrisation to theorem provers, while preserving the proof support and consistency of the prover. The approach is implemented in Isabelle and illustrated by examples of an algorithm design rule and of the modular development of computational effects for imperative language features based on monads

Nordic Journal of Computing 13(2006), 1–20. STRUCTURED FORMAL DEVELOPMENT IN ISABELLE

Abstract. General purpose theorem provers provide advanced facilities for proving properties about specifications, and may therefore be a valuable tool in formal program development. However, these provers generally lack many of the useful structuring mechanisms found in functional programming or specification languages. This paper presents a constructive approach to adding theory morphisms and parametrisation to theorem provers, while preserving the proof support and consistency of the prover. The approach is implemented in Isabelle and illustrated by examples of an algorithm design rule and of the modular development of computational effects for imperative language features based on monads