Constrained Horn Clauses
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Constrained Horn Clauses
Constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) are a fragment of first-order logic with applications to program verification and synthesis. Constrained Horn clauses can be seen as a form of constraint logic programming. Definition A constrained Horn clause is a formula of the form \phi\land P_1(\mathbf_1)\land \ldots\land P_n(\mathbf)\to P(\mathbf) where \phi is a ''constraint'' in some first-order theory, P_i are predicates, and \mathbf_i are universally-quantified variables. The addition of constraint makes it a generalization of the plain Horn clause. Decidability The satisfiability of constrained Horn clauses with constraints from linear integer arithmetic is undecidable. Solvers There are several automated solvers for CHCs, including the SPACER engine of Z3. CHC-COMP is an annual competition of CHC solvers. CHC-COMP has run every year since 2018. Applications Constrained Horn clauses are a convenient language in which to specify problems in program verification. The ...
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First-order Logic
First-order logic, also called predicate logic, predicate calculus, or quantificational logic, is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects, and allows the use of sentences that contain variables. Rather than propositions such as "all humans are mortal", in first-order logic one can have expressions in the form "for all ''x'', if ''x'' is a human, then ''x'' is mortal", where "for all ''x"'' is a quantifier, ''x'' is a variable, and "... ''is a human''" and "... ''is mortal''" are predicates. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers or relations; in this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic. A theory about a topic, such as set theory, a theory for groups,A. Tarski, ''Undecidable Theories'' (1953), p. 77. Studies in Logic and the Foundation of Mathematics, North-Holland or a formal theory o ...
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Formal Verification
In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics. Formal verification is a key incentive for formal specification of systems, and is at the core of formal methods. It represents an important dimension of analysis and verification in electronic design automation and is one approach to software verification. The use of formal verification enables the highest Evaluation Assurance Level ( EAL7) in the framework of common criteria for computer security certification. Formal verification can be helpful in proving the correctness of systems such as: cryptographic protocols, combinational circuits, digital circuits with internal memory, and software expressed as source code in a programming language. Prominent examples of verified software systems include the CompCert verified C compiler and the seL ...
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Program Synthesis
In computer science, program synthesis is the task to construct a computer program, program that provably correct, provably satisfies a given high-level formal specification. In contrast to program verification, the program is to be constructed rather than given; however, both fields make use of formal proof techniques, and both comprise approaches of different degrees of automation. In contrast to automatic programming techniques, specifications in program synthesis are usually non-algorithmic statements in an appropriate formal system, logical calculus. The primary application of program synthesis is to relieve the programmer of the burden of writing correct, efficient code that satisfies a specification. However, program synthesis also has applications to superoptimization and inference of loop invariants. Origin During the Summer Institute of Symbolic Logic at Cornell University in 1957, Alonzo Church defined the problem to synthesize a circuit from mathematical requirements. ...
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Constraint Logic Programming
Constraint logic programming is a form of constraint programming, in which logic programming is extended to include concepts from constraint satisfaction. A constraint logic program is a logic program that contains constraints in the body of clauses. An example of a clause including a constraint is . In this clause, is a constraint; A(X,Y), B(X), and C(Y) are Literal (mathematical logic), literals as in regular logic programming. This clause states one condition under which the statement A(X,Y) holds: X+Y is greater than zero and both B(X) and C(Y) are true. As in regular logic programming, programs are queried about the provability of a goal, which itself may contain constraints in addition to literals. A proof for a goal is composed of clauses whose bodies are satisfiable constraints and literals that can in turn be proved using other clauses. Execution is performed by an interpreter, which starts from the goal and Recursion, recursively scans the clauses trying to prove the goa ...
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Well-formed Formula
In mathematical logic, propositional logic and predicate logic, a well-formed formula, abbreviated WFF or wff, often simply formula, is a finite sequence of symbols from a given alphabet that is part of a formal language. The abbreviation wff is pronounced "woof", or sometimes "wiff", "weff", or "whiff". A formal language can be identified with the set of formulas in the language. A formula is a syntactic object that can be given a semantic meaning by means of an interpretation. Two key uses of formulas are in propositional logic and predicate logic. Introduction A key use of formulas is in propositional logic and predicate logic such as first-order logic. In those contexts, a formula is a string of symbols φ for which it makes sense to ask "is φ true?", once any free variables in φ have been instantiated. In formal logic, proofs can be represented by sequences of formulas with certain properties, and the final formula in the sequence is what is proven. Alth ...
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Horn Clause
In mathematical logic and logic programming, a Horn clause is a logical formula of a particular rule-like form that gives it useful properties for use in logic programming, formal specification, universal algebra and model theory. Horn clauses are named for the logician Alfred Horn, who first pointed out their significance in 1951. Definition A Horn clause is a disjunctive clause (a disjunction of literals) with at most one positive, i.e. unnegated, literal. Conversely, a disjunction of literals with at most one negated literal is called a dual-Horn clause. A Horn clause with exactly one positive literal is a definite clause or a strict Horn clause; a definite clause with no negative literals is a unit clause, and a unit clause without variables is a fact; a Horn clause without a positive literal is a goal clause. The empty clause, consisting of no literals (which is equivalent to ''false''), is a goal clause. These three kinds of Horn clauses are illustrated in the follo ...
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Undecidable Problem
In computability theory and computational complexity theory, an undecidable problem is a decision problem for which it is proved to be impossible to construct an algorithm that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer. The halting problem is an example: it can be proven that there is no algorithm that correctly determines whether an arbitrary program eventually halts when run. Background A decision problem is a question which, for every input in some infinite set of inputs, requires a "yes" or "no" answer. Those inputs can be numbers (for example, the decision problem "is the input a prime number?") or values of some other kind, such as strings of a formal language. The formal representation of a decision problem is a subset of the natural numbers. For decision problems on natural numbers, the set consists of those numbers that the decision problem answers "yes" to. For example, the decision problem "is the input even?" is formalized as the set of even numbers. A decision pr ...
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Z3 Theorem Prover
Z3, also known as the Z3 Theorem Prover, is a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver developed by Microsoft. Overview Z3 was developed in the ''Research in Software Engineering'' (RiSE) group at Microsoft Research Redmond and is targeted at solving problems that arise in software verification and program analysis. Z3 supports arithmetic, fixed-size bit-vectors, extensional arrays, datatypes, uninterpreted functions, and quantifiers. Its main applications are extended static checking, test case generation, and predicate abstraction. Z3 was open sourced in the beginning of 2015. The source code is licensed under MIT License and hosted on GitHub. The solver can be built using Visual Studio, a makefile or using CMake and runs on Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, and macOS. The default input format for Z3 is SMTLIB2. It also has officially supported bindings for several programming languages, including C, C++, Python, .NET, Java, and OCaml. Examples Propositional and predicate ...
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LLVM
LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent specification, language-independent intermediate representation (IR) that serves as a Software portability, portable, high-level assembly language that can be optimizing compiler, optimized with a variety of transformations over multiple passes. The name ''LLVM'' originally stood for ''Low Level Virtual Machine.'' However, the project has since expanded, and the name is no longer an acronym but an orphan initialism. LLVM is written in C++ and is designed for compile-time, Linker (computing), link-time, runtime (program lifecycle phase), runtime, and "idle-time" optimization. Originally implemented for C (programming language), C and C++, the language-agnostic design of LLVM has since spawned a wide ...
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Java (programming Language)
Java is a High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Memory safety, memory-safe, object-oriented programming, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' (Write once, run anywhere, WORA), meaning that compiler, compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need to recompile. Java applications are typically compiled to Java bytecode, bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax (programming languages), syntax of Java is similar to C (programming language), C and C++, but has fewer low-level programming language, low-level facilities than either of them. The Java runtime provides dynamic capabilities (such as Reflective programming, reflection and runtime code modification) that are typically not available in traditional compiled languages. Java gained popularity sh ...
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