Turchin's Relation for Call-by-Name Computations: A Formal Approach

Supercompilation is a program transformation technique that was first described by V. F. Turchin in the 1970s. In supercompilation, Turchin's relation as a similarity relation on call-stack configurations is used both for call-by-value and call-by-name semantics to terminate unfolding of the program being transformed. In this paper, we give a formal grammar model of call-by-name stack behaviour. We classify the model in terms of the Chomsky hierarchy and then formally prove that Turchin's relation can terminate all computations generated by the model.Comment: In Proceedings VPT 2016, arXiv:1607.0183

The Ecce and Logen Partial Evaluators and their Web Interfaces

We present Ecce and Logen, two partial evaluators for Prolog using the online and offline approach respectively. We briefly present the foundations of these tools and discuss various applications. We also present new implementations of these tools, carried out in Ciao Prolog. In addition to a command-line interface new user-friendly web interfaces were developed. These enable non-expert users to specialise logic programs using a web browser, without the need for a local installation

Efficient local unfolding with ancestor stacks

The most successful unfolding rules used nowadays in the partial evaluation of logic programs are based on well quasi orders (wqo) applied over (covering) ancestors, i.e., a subsequence of the atoms selected during a derivation. Ancestor (sub)sequences are used to increase the specialization power of unfolding while still guaranteeing termination and also to reduce the number of atoms for which the wqo has to be checked. Unfortunately, maintaining the structure of the ancestor relation during unfolding introduces significant overhead. We propose an efficient, practical local unfolding rule based on the notion of covering ancestors which can be used in combination with a wqo and allows a stack-based implementation without losing any opportunities for specialization. Using our technique, certain non-leftmost unfoldings are allowed as long as local unfolding is performed, i.e., we cover depth-first strategies. To deal with practical programs, we propose assertion-based techniques which allow our approach to treat programs that include (Prolog) built-ins and external predicates in a very extensible manner, for the case of leftmost unfolding. Finally, we report on our mplementation of these techniques embedded in a practical partial evaluator, which shows that our techniques, in addition to dealing with practical programs, are also significantly more efficient in time and somewhat more efficient in memory than traditional tree-based implementations. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)

Multiset Path Orderings and Their Application to Termination of Term Rewriting Systems

In this expository paper, a comprehensive study of multiset orderings, nested multiset orderings and multiset path orderings is presented. In particular, it is illustrated how multiset path orderings admit the use of relatively simple and intuitive termination functions that lead to termination of  a class of term rewriting systems

A Partial Evaluation Framework for Order-sorted Equational Programs modulo Axioms

[EN] Partial evaluation is a powerful and general program optimization technique with many successful applications. Existing PE schemes do not apply to expressive rule-based languages like Maude, CafeOBJ, OBJ, ASF+SDF, and ELAN, which support: 1) rich type structures with sorts, subsorts, and overloading; and 2) equational rewriting modulo various combinations of axioms such as associativity, commutativity, and identity. In this paper, we develop the new foundations needed and illustrate the key concepts by showing how they apply to partial evaluation of expressive programs written in Maude. Our partial evaluation scheme is based on an automatic unfolding algorithm that computes term variants and relies on high-performance order-sorted equational least general generalization and order-sorted equational homeomorphic embedding algorithms for ensuring termination. We show that our partial evaluation technique is sound and complete for convergent rewrite theories that may contain various combinations of associativity, commutativity, and/or identity axioms for different binary operators. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Maude's automatic partial evaluator, Victoria, on several examples where it shows significant speed-ups. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This work has been partially supported by the EU (FEDER) and the Spanish MCIU under grant RTI2018-094403-B-C32, by Generalitat Valenciana under grant PROMETEO/2019/098, and by NRL under contract number N00173-17-1-G002. Angel Cuenca-Ortega has been supported by the SENESCYT, Ecuador (scholarship program 2013).Alpuente Frasnedo, M.; Cuenca-Ortega, AE.; Escobar Román, S.; Meseguer, J. (2020). A Partial Evaluation Framework for Order-sorted Equational Programs modulo Axioms. Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming. 110:1-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2019.100501S13611

Verification of Java Bytecode using Analysis and Transformation of Logic Programs

State of the art analyzers in the Logic Programming (LP) paradigm are nowadays mature and sophisticated. They allow inferring a wide variety of global properties including termination, bounds on resource consumption, etc. The aim of this work is to automatically transfer the power of such analysis tools for LP to the analysis and verification of Java bytecode (JVML). In order to achieve our goal, we rely on well-known techniques for meta-programming and program specialization. More precisely, we propose to partially evaluate a JVML interpreter implemented in LP together with (an LP representation of) a JVML program and then analyze the residual program. Interestingly, at least for the examples we have studied, our approach produces very simple LP representations of the original JVML programs. This can be seen as a decompilation from JVML to high-level LP source. By reasoning about such residual programs, we can automatically prove in the CiaoPP system some non-trivial properties of JVML programs such as termination, run-time error freeness and infer bounds on its resource consumption. We are not aware of any other system which is able to verify such advanced properties of Java bytecode

Distilling programs for verification

In this paper, we show how our program transformation algorithm called distillation can not only be used for the optimisation of programs, but can also be used to facilitate program verification. Using the distillation algorithm, programs are transformed into a specialised form in which functions are tail recursive, and very few intermediate structures are created. We then show how properties of this specialised form of program can be easily verified by the application of inductive proof rules. We therefore argue that the distillation algorithm is an ideal candidate for inclusion within compilers as it facilitates the two goals of program optimization and verification

Efficient local unfolding with ancestor stacks for full prolog

The integration of powerful partial evaluation methods into practical compilers for logic programs is still far from reality. This is related both to 1) efficiency issues and to 2) the complications of dealing with practical programs. Regarding efnciency, the most successful unfolding rules used nowadays are based on structural orders applied over (covering) ancestors, i.e., a subsequence of the atoms selected during a derivation. Unfortunately, maintaining the structure of the ancestor relation during unfolding introduces significant overhead. We propose an efficient, practical local unfolding rule based on the notion of covering ancestors which can be used in combination with any structural order and allows a stack-based implementation without losing any opportunities for specialization. Regarding the second issue, we propose assertion-based techniques which allow our approach to deal with real programs that include (Prolog) built-ins and external predicates in a very extensible manner. Finally, we report on our implementation of these techniques in a practical partial evaluator, embedded in a state of the art compiler which uses global analysis extensively (the Ciao compiler and, specifically, its preprocessor CiaoPP). The performance analysis of the resulting system shows that our techniques, in addition to dealing with practical programs, are also significantly more efficient in time and somewhat more efficient in memory than traditional tree-based implementations

Inspecting Maude Variants with GLINTS

[EN] This paper introduces GLINTS, a graphical tool for exploring variant narrowing computations in Maude. The most recent version of Maude, version 2.7.1, provides quite sophisticated unification features, including order-sorted equational unification for convergent theories modulo axioms such as associativity, commutativity, and identity. This novel equational unification relies on built-in generation of the set of variants of a term t, i.e., the canonical form of t sigma for a computed substitution sigma. Variant generation relies on a novel narrowing strategy called folding variant narrowing that opens up new applications in formal reasoning, theorem proving, testing, protocol analysis, and model checking, especially when the theory satisfies the finite variant property, i.e., there is a finite number of most general variants for every term in the theory. However, variant narrowing computations can be extremely involved and are simply presented in text format by Maude, often being too heavy to be debugged or even understood. The GLINTS system provides support for (i) determining whether a given theory satisfies the finite variant property, (ii) thoroughly exploring variant narrowing computations, (iii) automatic checking of node embedding and closedness modulo axioms, and (iv) querying and inspecting selected parts of the variant trees.This work has been partially supported by EU (FEDER) and Spanish MINECO grant TIN 2015-69175-C4-1-R and by Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO-II/2015/013. Angel Cuenca-Ortega is supported by SENESCYT, Ecuador (scholarship program 2013), and Julia Sapina by FPI-UPV grant SP2013-0083. Santiago Escobar is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-17-1-0286.Alpuente Frasnedo, M.; Cuenca-Ortega, A.; Escobar Román, S.; Sapiña-Sanchis, J. (2017). Inspecting Maude Variants with GLINTS. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. 17(5-6):689-707. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147106841700031XS689707175-