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This Survey provides an overview of techniques in termination analysis for programs with numerical variables and transitions defined by linear constraints. This subarea of program analysis is challenging due to the existence of undecidable…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Amir M. Ben-Amram , Samir Genaim , Joël Ouaknine , James Worrell

Many quantitative properties of probabilistic programs can be characterized as least fixed points, but verifying their lower bounds remains a challenging problem. We present a new approach to lower-bound verification that exploits and…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Satoshi Kura , Hiroshi Unno , Takeshi Tsukada

In this paper we present methods for the synthesis of polynomial invariants for probabilistic transition systems. Our approach is based on martingale theory. We construct invariants in the form of polynomials over program variables, which…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Anne Schreuder , C. -H. Luke Ong

There is growing interest in termination reasoning for non-linear programs and, meanwhile, recent dynamic strategies have shown they are able to infer invariants for such challenging programs. These advances led us to hypothesize that…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Ton Chanh Le , Timos Antonopoulos , Parisa Fathololumi , Eric Koskinen , ThanhVu Nguyen

We study the recursion-theoretic complexity of Positive Almost-Sure Termination ($\mathsf{PAST}$) in an imperative programming language with rational variables, bounded nondeterministic choice, and discrete probabilistic choice. A program…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2023-10-30 Rupak Majumdar , V. R. Sathiyanarayana

We study monads resulting from the combination of nondeterministic and probabilistic behaviour with the possibility of termination, which is essential in program semantics. Our main contributions are presentation results for the monads,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2021-04-22 Matteo Mio , Ralph Sarkis , Valeria Vignudelli

The scope of this work is the constraint-based synthesis of termination arguments for the restricted class of programs called linear lasso programs. A termination argument consists of a ranking function as well as a set of supporting…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-01-22 Jan Leike

We investigate the termination problem of a family of multi-path polynomial programs (MPPs), in which all assignments to program variables are polynomials, and test conditions of loops and conditional statements are polynomial equalities.…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2020-09-02 Yangjia Li , Naijun Zhan , Mingshuai Chen , Hui Lu , Guohua Wu , Joost-Pieter Katoen

We study termination of higher-order probabilistic functional programs with recursion, stochastic conditioning and sampling from continuous distributions. Reasoning about the termination probability of programs with continuous distributions…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-04-13 Raven Beutner , Luke Ong

Quantitative loop invariants are an essential element in the verification of probabilistic programs. Recently, multivariate Lagrange interpolation has been applied to synthesizing polynomial invariants. In this paper, we propose an…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-07-11 Yijun Feng , Lijun Zhang , David N. Jansen , Naijun Zhan , Bican Xia

When analyzing probabilistic computations, a powerful approach is to first find a martingale---an expression on the program variables whose expectation remains invariant---and then apply the optional stopping theorem in order to infer…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2018-03-16 Gilles Barthe , Thomas Espitau , Luis María Ferrer Fioriti , Justin Hsu

We consider imperative programs that involve both randomization and pure nondeterminism. The central question is how to find a strategy resolving the pure nondeterminism such that the so-obtained determinized program satisfies a given…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-11-15 Kevin Batz , Tom Jannik Biskup , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Tobias Winkler

The general setting of this work is the constraint-based synthesis of termination arguments. We consider a restricted class of programs called lasso programs. The termination argument for a lasso program is a pair of a ranking function and…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-01-22 Matthias Heizmann , Jochen Hoenicke , Jan Leike , Andreas Podelski

The notion of program sensitivity (aka Lipschitz continuity) specifies that changes in the program input result in proportional changes to the program output. For probabilistic programs the notion is naturally extended to expected…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Peixin Wang , Hongfei Fu , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Yuxin Deng , Ming Xu

We describe the Amber tool for proving and refuting the termination of a class of probabilistic while-programs with polynomial arithmetic, in a fully automated manner. Amber combines martingale theory with properties of asymptotic bounding…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-07-29 Marcel Moosbrugger , Ezio Bartocci , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Laura Kovács

We introduce a system of monadic affine sized types, which substantially generalise usual sized types, and allows this way to capture probabilistic higher-order programs which terminate almost surely. Going beyond plain, strong…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-01-17 Ugo Dal Lago , Charles Grellois

Lexicographic Ranking SuperMartingale (LexRSM) is a probabilistic extension of Lexicographic Ranking Function (LexRF), which is a widely accepted technique for verifying program termination. In this paper, we are the first to propose sound…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-04-14 Toru Takisaka , Libo Zhang , Changjiang Wang , Jiamou Liu

We present new deterministic algorithms for several cases of the maximum rank matrix completion problem (for short matrix completion), i.e. the problem of assigning values to the variables in a given symbolic matrix as to maximize the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-07-11 Gábor Ivanyos , Marek Karpinski , Nitin Saxena

A randomized algorithm for a search problem is *pseudodeterministic* if it produces a fixed canonical solution to the search problem with high probability. In their seminal work on the topic, Gat and Goldwasser posed as their main open…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Lijie Chen , Zhenjian Lu , Igor C. Oliveira , Hanlin Ren , Rahul Santhanam

We present an efficient approach to prove termination of monotone programs with integer variables, an expressive class of loops that is often encountered in computer programs. Our approach is based on a lightweight static analysis method…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-02-07 Omar Al-Bataineh , Xie Xiaofei , Mark Reynolds