Specifying Message Formats with Contiguity Types

We introduce Contiguity Types, a formalism for network message formats, aimed especially at self-describing formats. Contiguity types provide an intermediate layer between programming language data structures and messages, offering a helpful setting from which to automatically generate decoders, filters, and message generators. The syntax and semantics of contiguity types are defined and used to prove the correctness of a matching algorithm which has the flavour of a parser generator. The matcher has been used to enforce semantic well-formedness conditions on complex message formats for an autonomous unmanned avionics system

Emerging trends proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics: TPHOLs 2004

technical reportThis volume constitutes the proceedings of the Emerging Trends track of the 17th International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics (TPHOLs 2004) held September 14-17, 2004 in Park City, Utah, USA. The TPHOLs conference covers all aspects of theorem proving in higher order logics as well as related topics in theorem proving and verification. There were 42 papers submitted to TPHOLs 2004 in the full research cate- gory, each of which was refereed by at least 3 reviewers selected by the program committee. Of these submissions, 21 were accepted for presentation at the con- ference and publication in volume 3223 of Springer?s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. In keeping with longstanding tradition, TPHOLs 2004 also offered a venue for the presentation of work in progress, where researchers invite discussion by means of a brief introductory talk and then discuss their work at a poster session. The work-in-progress papers are held in this volume, which is published as a 2004 technical report of the School of Computing at the University of Utah

Proofs as a substrate for tool integration supporting high-confidence embedded software

ManuscriptAs the size and complexity of software in safety-critical embedded systems increases, the ability of programmers to deliver these systems in a timely fashion decreases. Specific difficulties are that embedded software must interact with the physical world in real time and that it must make efficient use of resources such as memory and energy. Our work is driven by the observation that the fundamental scarcity limiting our ability to create high-confidence embedded software is human developer time. A practical and incremental solution to this problem is tool-rich software development where software tools such as verifiers, static bug finders, stub generators, and optimizing compilers automate as many development tasks as possible

A Step-Indexing Approach to Partial Functions

We describe an ACL2 package for defining partial recursive functions that also supports efficient execution. While packages for defining partial recursive functions already exist for other theorem provers, they often require inductive definitions or recursion operators which are not available in ACL2 and they provide little, if any, support for executing the resulting definitions. We use step-indexing as the underlying implementation technology, enabling the definitions to be carried out in first order logic. We also show how recent enhancements to ACL2's guard feature can be used to enable the efficient execution of partial recursive functions.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2013, arXiv:1304.712

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

Recursive Definitions of Monadic Functions

Using standard domain-theoretic fixed-points, we present an approach for defining recursive functions that are formulated in monadic style. The method works both in the simple option monad and the state-exception monad of Isabelle/HOL's imperative programming extension, which results in a convenient definition principle for imperative programs, which were previously hard to define. For such monadic functions, the recursion equation can always be derived without preconditions, even if the function is partial. The construction is easy to automate, and convenient induction principles can be derived automatically.Comment: In Proceedings PAR 2010, arXiv:1012.455

Lassie: HOL4 Tactics by Example

Proof engineering efforts using interactive theorem proving have yielded several impressive projects in software systems and mathematics. A key obstacle to such efforts is the requirement that the domain expert is also an expert in the low-level details in constructing the proof in a theorem prover. In particular, the user needs to select a sequence of tactics that lead to a successful proof, a task that in general requires knowledge of the exact names and use of a large set of tactics. We present Lassie, a tactic framework for the HOL4 theorem prover that allows individual users to define their own tactic language by example and give frequently used tactics or tactic combinations easier-to-remember names. The core of Lassie is an extensible semantic parser, which allows the user to interactively extend the tactic language through a process of definitional generalization. Defining tactics in Lassie thus does not require any knowledge in implementing custom tactics, while proofs written in Lassie retain the correctness guarantees provided by the HOL4 system. We show through case studies how Lassie can be used in small and larger proofs by novice and more experienced interactive theorem prover users, and how we envision it to ease the learning curve in a HOL4 tutorial

Proving as Programming with DrHOL: A Preliminary Design

We discuss the design of a new implementation of the HOL system aimed at improved graphical user interface support for formal proof. We call our approach Proving as Programming, since we believe that metalanguage programming is a central aspect of proof construction. Thus we look to contemporary programming environments for inspiration on how to provide graphical support for proof. In particular, our implementation builds upon DrScheme, a popular programming environment for Scheme. 1 Proving as Programming We have begun work on DrHOL, a new implementation of the HOL logic. DrHOL is systematically derived from HOL-4 [8] and aims at improving user interfaces in many aspects of work in HOL: development of proof procedures, construction of terms and definitions, interactive proof, and embedding of object languages are seen as candidates for better interface support. We believe that programmability is an essential part of all these activities