Symbol Elimination for Automated Generation of Program Properties

Automatic understanding of the intended meaning of computer programs is a very hard problem, requiring intelligence and reasoning. In this talk we describe applications of our symbol elimination methods in automated proram analysis. Symbol elimination uses first-order theorem proving techniques in conjunction with symbolic computation methods, and derives nontrivial program properties, such as loop invariants and loop bounds, in a fully automatic way. Moreover, symbol elimination can be used as an alternative to interpolation for software verification

Reasoning About Loops Using Vampire in KeY

We describe symbol elimination and consequence finding in the first-order theorem prover Vampire for automatic generation of quantified invariants, possibly with quantifier alternations, of loops with arrays. Unlike the previous implementation of symbol elimination in Vampire, our work is not limited to a specific programming language but provides a generic framework by relying on a simple guarded command representation of the input loop. We also improve the loop analysis part in Vampire by generating loop properties more easily handled by the saturation engine of Vampire. Our experiments show that, with our changes, the number of generated invariants is decreased, in some cases, by a factor of 20. We also provide a framework to use our approach to invariant generation in conjunction with pre- and post-conditions of program loops. We use the program specification to find relevant invariants as well as to verify the partial correctness of the loop. As a case study, we demonstrate how symbol elimination in Vampire can be used as an interface for realistic imperative languages, by integrating our tool in the KeY verification system, thus allowing reasoning about loops in Java programs in a fully automated way, without any user guidance

A formally verified compiler back-end

This article describes the development and formal verification (proof of semantic preservation) of a compiler back-end from Cminor (a simple imperative intermediate language) to PowerPC assembly code, using the Coq proof assistant both for programming the compiler and for proving its correctness. Such a verified compiler is useful in the context of formal methods applied to the certification of critical software: the verification of the compiler guarantees that the safety properties proved on the source code hold for the executable compiled code as well

The Vampire and the FOOL

This paper presents new features recently implemented in the theorem prover Vampire, namely support for first-order logic with a first class boolean sort (FOOL) and polymorphic arrays. In addition to having a first class boolean sort, FOOL also contains if-then-else and let-in expressions. We argue that presented extensions facilitate reasoning-based program analysis, both by increasing the expressivity of first-order reasoners and by gains in efficiency

On Counterexample Guided Quantifier Instantiation for Synthesis in CVC4

We introduce the first program synthesis engine implemented inside an SMT solver. We present an approach that extracts solution functions from unsatisfiability proofs of the negated form of synthesis conjectures. We also discuss novel counterexample-guided techniques for quantifier instantiation that we use to make finding such proofs practically feasible. A particularly important class of specifications are single-invocation properties, for which we present a dedicated algorithm. To support syntax restrictions on generated solutions, our approach can transform a solution found without restrictions into the desired syntactic form. As an alternative, we show how to use evaluation function axioms to embed syntactic restrictions into constraints over algebraic datatypes, and then use an algebraic datatype decision procedure to drive synthesis. Our experimental evaluation on syntax-guided synthesis benchmarks shows that our implementation in the CVC4 SMT solver is competitive with state-of-the-art tools for synthesis