Symbolic Semantics for Probabilistic Programs

We present a new symbolic execution semantics of probabilistic programs that include observe statements and sampling from continuous distributions. Building on Kozen’s seminal work, this symbolic semantics consists of a countable collection of measurable functions, along with a partition of the state space. We use the new semantics to provide a full correctness proof of symbolic execution for probabilistic programs. We also implement this semantics in the tool symProb, and illustrate its use on examples

A Formal, Resource Consumption-Preserving Translation of Actors to Haskell

We present a formal translation of an actor-based language with cooperative scheduling to the functional language Haskell. The translation is proven correct with respect to a formal semantics of the source language and a high-level operational semantics of the target, i.e. a subset of Haskell. The main correctness theorem is expressed in terms of a simulation relation between the operational semantics of actor programs and their translation. This allows us to then prove that the resource consumption is preserved over this translation, as we establish an equivalence of the cost of the original and Haskell-translated execution traces.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 26th International Symposium on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2016), Edinburgh, Scotland UK, 6-8 September 2016 (arXiv:1608.02534

A Transformational Approach to Resource Analysis with Typed-Norms

In order to automatically infer the resource consumption of programs, analyzers track how data sizes change along a program s execution. Typically, analyzers measure the sizes of data by applying norms which are mappings from data to natural numbers that represent the sizes of the corresponding data. When norms are defined by taking type information into account, they are named typed-norms. The main contribution of this paper is a transformational approach to resource analysis with typed-norms. The analysis is based on a transformation of the program into an intermediate abstract program in which each variable is abstracted with respect to all considered norms which are valid for its type. We also sketch a simple analysis that can be used to automatically infer the required, useful, typed-norms from programs.This work was funded partially by the EU project FP7-ICT-610582 ENVISAGE: Engineering Virtualized Services (http://www.envisage-project.eu) and by the Spanish projects TIN2008-05624 and TIN2012-38137. Raúl Gutiérrez is also partially supported by a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship from the Spanish MINECO, ref. JCI-2012-13528.Albert Albiol, EM.; Genaim, S.; Gutiérrez Gil, R. (2014). A Transformational Approach to Resource Analysis with Typed-Norms. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 8901:38-53. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14125-1_3S38538901Albert, E., Arenas, P., Genaim, S., Gómez-Zamalloa, M., Puebla, G.: Cost Analysis of Concurrent OO Programs. In: Yang, H. (ed.) APLAS 2011. LNCS, vol. 7078, pp. 238–254. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)Albert, E., Arenas, P., Genaim, S., Puebla, G., Zanardini, D.: Cost Analysis of Java Bytecode. In: De Nicola, R. (ed.) ESOP 2007. LNCS, vol. 4421, pp. 157–172. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Albert, E., Arenas, P., Genaim, S., Puebla, G., Zanardini, D.: Removing Useless Variables in Cost Analysis of Java Bytecode. In: Proc. of SAC 2008, pp. 368–375. ACM (2008)Alonso, D., Arenas, P., Genaim, S.: Handling Non-linear Operations in the Value Analysis of COSTA. In: Proc. of BYTECODE 2011. ENTCS, vol. 279, pp. 3–17. Elsevier (2011)Bossi, A., Cocco, N., Fabris, M.: Proving Termination of Logic Programs by Exploiting Term Properties. In: Proc. of TAPSOFT 1991. LNCS, vol. 494, pp. 153–180. Springer (1991)Bruynooghe, M., Codish, M., Gallagher, J., Genaim, S., Vanhoof, W.: Termination Analysis of Logic Programs through Combination of Type-Based norms. TOPLAS 29(2), Art. 10 (2007)Claessen, K., Hughes, J.: QuickCheck: A Lightweight Tool for Random Testing of Haskell Programs. In: Proc. of ICFP 2000, pp. 268–279. ACM (2000)Fähndrich, M.: Static Verification for Code Contracts. In: Cousot, R., Martel, M. (eds.) SAS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6337, pp. 2–5. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)Genaim, S., Codish, M., Gallagher, J.P., Lagoon, V.: Combining Norms to Prove Termination. In: Cortesi, A. (ed.) VMCAI 2002. LNCS, vol. 2294, pp. 123–138. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)Johnsen, E.B., Hähnle, R., Schäfer, J., Schlatte, R., Steffen, M.: ABS: A Core Language for Abstract Behavioral Specification. In: Aichernig, B.K., de Boer, F.S., Bonsangue, M.M. (eds.) Formal Methods for Components and Objects. LNCS, vol. 6957, pp. 142–164. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)King, A., Shen, K., Benoy, F.: Lower-bound Time-complexity Analysis of Logic Programs. In: Proc. of ILPS 1997, pp. 261–275. MIT Press (1997)Serrano, A., Lopez-Garcia, P., Bueno, F., Hermenegildo, M.: Sized Type Analysis for Logic Programs. In: Tech. Comms. of ICLP 2013. Cambridge U. Press (2013) (to appear)Spoto, F., Mesnard, F., Payet, É.: A Termination Analyser for Java Bytecode based on Path-Length. TOPLAS 32(3), Art. 8 (2010)Vallée-Rai, R., Hendren, L., Sundaresan, V., Lam, P., Gagnon, E., Co, P.: Soot - a Java Optimization Framework. In: Proc. of CASCON 1999. pp. 125–135. IBM (1999)Vasconcelos, P.: Space Cost Analysis using Sized Types. Ph.D. thesis, School of CS, University of St. Andrews (2008)Vasconcelos, P.B., Hammond, K.: Inferring Cost Equations for Recursive, Polymorphic and Higher-Order Functional Programs. In: Trinder, P., Michaelson, G.J., Peña, R. (eds.) IFL 2003. LNCS, vol. 3145, pp. 86–101. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)Wegbreit, B.: Mechanical Program Analysis. Commun. ACM 18(9), 528–539 (1975

On the nature of symbolic execution

In this paper, we provide a formal definition of symbolic execution in terms of a symbolic transition system and prove its correctness with respect to an operational semantics which models the execution on concrete values. We first introduce such a formal model for a basic programming language with a statically fixed number of programming variables. This model is extended to a programming language with recursive procedures which are called by a call-by-value parameter mechanism. Finally, we show how to extend this latter model of symbolic execution to arrays and object-oriented languages which feature dynamically allocated variables

Behavioral types in programming languages

A recent trend in programming language research is to use behav- ioral type theory to ensure various correctness properties of large- scale, communication-intensive systems. Behavioral types encompass concepts such as interfaces, communication protocols, contracts, and choreography. The successful application of behavioral types requires a solid understanding of several practical aspects, from their represen- tation in a concrete programming language, to their integration with other programming constructs such as methods and functions, to de- sign and monitoring methodologies that take behaviors into account. This survey provides an overview of the state of the art of these aspects, which we summarize as the pragmatics of behavioral types

A Graph-Based Semantics Workbench for Concurrent Asynchronous Programs

A number of novel programming languages and libraries have been proposed that offer simpler-to-use models of concurrency than threads. It is challenging, however, to devise execution models that successfully realise their abstractions without forfeiting performance or introducing unintended behaviours. This is exemplified by SCOOP---a concurrent object-oriented message-passing language---which has seen multiple semantics proposed and implemented over its evolution. We propose a "semantics workbench" with fully and semi-automatic tools for SCOOP, that can be used to analyse and compare programs with respect to different execution models. We demonstrate its use in checking the consistency of semantics by applying it to a set of representative programs, and highlighting a deadlock-related discrepancy between the principal execution models of the language. Our workbench is based on a modular and parameterisable graph transformation semantics implemented in the GROOVE tool. We discuss how graph transformations are leveraged to atomically model intricate language abstractions, and how the visual yet algebraic nature of the model can be used to ascertain soundness.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of FASE 2016 (to appear

Time complexity of concurrent programs: a technique based on behavioural types

International audienceWe study the problem of automatically computing the time complexity of concurrent object-oriented programs. To determine this complexity we use intermediate abstract descriptions that record relevant information for the time analysis (cost of statements, creations of objects, and concurrent operations), called behavioural types. Then, we define a translation function that takes behavioural types and makes the parallelism explicit into so-called cost equations , which are fed to an automatic off-the-shelf solver for obtaining the time complexity

Deadlock detection for actor-based coroutines

The actor-based language studied in this paper features asynchronous method calls and supports coroutines which allow for the cooperative scheduling of the method invocations belonging to an actor. We model the local behavior of an actor as a well-structured transition system by means of predicate abstraction and derive the decidability of the occurrence of deadlocks caused by the coroutine mode of method execution