Related papers: Removing Unnecessary Variables from Horn Clause Ve…
This paper surveys recent work on applying analysis and transformation techniques that originate in the field of constraint logic programming (CLP) to the problem of verifying software systems. We present specialisation-based techniques for…
Several techniques and tools have been developed for verification of properties expressed as Horn clauses with constraints over a background theory (CHC). Current CHC verification tools implement intricate algorithms and are often limited…
We present a method for automatic inference of conditions on the initial states of a program that guarantee that the safety assertions in the program are not violated. Constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) are used to model the program and…
Reduction to the satisfiability problem for constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) is a widely studied approach to automated program verification. The current CHC-based methods for pointer-manipulating programs, however, are not very scalable.…
Many Program Verification and Synthesis problems of interest can be modeled directly using Horn clauses and many recent advances in the CLP and CAV communities have centered around efficiently solving problems presented as Horn clauses. The…
The functional properties of a program are often specified by providing a contract for each of its functions. A contract of a function consists of a pair of formulas, called a precondition and a postcondition, which, respectively, should…
Many transformation techniques developed for constraint logic programs, also known as constrained Horn clauses (CHCs), have found new useful applications in the field of program verification. In this paper, we work out a nontrivial case…
The proof of a program property can be reduced to the proof of satisfiability of a set of constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) which can be automatically generated from the program and the property. In this paper we have conducted a case study…
We present a method for verifying the correctness of imperative programs which is based on the automated transformation of their specifications. Given a program prog, we consider a partial correctness specification of the form $\{\varphi\}$…
We show how automatic tools for the verification of linear and branching time properties of procedural, multi-threaded, and functional programs as well as program synthesis can be naturally and uniformly seen as solvers of constraints in…
We address the problem of verifying that the functions of a program meet their contracts, specified by pre/postconditions. We follow an approach based on constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) by which the verification problem is reduced to the…
Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) have conventionally been used as a low-level representation in formal verification. Most existing solvers use a diverse set of specialized techniques, including direct state space traversal or…
Programs that manipulate tree-shaped data structures often require complex, specialized proofs that are difficult to generalize and automate. This paper introduces a unified, foundational approach to verifying such programs. Central to our…
Motivated by applications in automated verification of higher-order functional programs, we develop a notion of constrained Horn clauses in higher-order logic and a decision problem concerning their satisfiability. We show that, although…
Verifying programs that manipulate tree data structures often requires complex, ad-hoc proofs that are hard to generalize and automate. This paper introduces an automatic technique for analyzing such programs. Our approach combines automata…
Automatically verifying safety properties of programs is hard, and it is even harder if the program acts upon arrays or other forms of maps. Many approaches exist for verifying programs operating upon Boolean and integer values (e.g.…
The use of temporal logics has long been recognised as a fundamental approach to the formal specification and verification of reactive systems. In this paper, we take on the problem of automatically verifying a temporal property, given by a…
We address the problem of verifying the satisfiability of Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) based on theories of inductively defined data structures, such as lists and trees. We propose a transformation technique whose objective is the…
Verification of higher-order probabilistic programs is a challenging problem. We present a verification method that supports several quantitative properties of higher-order probabilistic programs. Usually, extending verification methods to…
We present a compositional SMT-based algorithm for safety of procedural C programs that takes the heap into consideration as well. Existing SMT-based approaches are either largely restricted to handling linear arithmetic operations and…