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Related papers: A New Proof Rule for Almost-Sure Termination

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Deciding termination is a fundamental problem in the analysis of probabilistic imperative programs. We consider the qualitative and quantitative probabilistic termination problems for an imperative programming model with discrete…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2024-07-25 Rupak Majumdar , V. R. Sathiyanarayana

Proving programs terminating is a fundamental computer science challenge. Recent research has produced powerful tools that can check a wide range of programs for termination. The analog for probabilistic programs, namely termination with…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2012-04-16 Javier Esparza , Andreas Gaiser , Stefan Kiefer

Extending our own and others' earlier approaches to reasoning about termination of probabilistic programs, we propose and prove a new rule for termination with probability one, also known as "almost-certain termination". The rule uses both…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-01-09 Annabelle McIver , Carroll Morgan

We study the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs. First, we show that supermartingales with lower bounds on conditional absolute difference provide a sound approach for the almost-sure termination problem. Moreover,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-08-24 Mingzhang Huang , Hongfei Fu , Krishnendu Chatterjee

In this work, we consider the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs that asks whether a given probabilistic program terminates with probability 1. Scalable approaches for program analysis often rely on modularity as…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-08-13 Mingzhang Huang , Hongfei Fu , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Amir Kafshdar Goharshady

The extension of classical imperative programs with real-valued random variables and random branching gives rise to probabilistic programs. The termination problem is one of the most fundamental liveness properties for such programs. The…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-08-09 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady , Petr Novotný , Jiři Zárevúcky , Đorđe Žikelić

Termination is one of the basic liveness properties, and we study the termination problem for probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. Previous works focused on the qualitative problem that asks whether an input program terminates…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2016-11-17 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Petr Novotný , Đorđe Žikelić

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

In recent years, numerous techniques were developed to automatically prove termination of different kinds of probabilistic programs. However, there are only few automated methods to disprove their termination. In this paper, we present the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Jan-Christoph Kassing , Henri Nagel , Alexander Schlecht , Jürgen Giesl

We study the termination problem for nondeterministic recursive probabilistic programs. First, we show that a ranking-supermartingales-based approach is both sound and complete for bounded terminiation (i.e., bounded expected termination…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-01-12 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Hongfei Fu

We consider the almost-sure (a.s.) termination problem for probabilistic programs, which are a stochastic extension of classical imperative programs. Lexicographic ranking functions provide a sound and practical approach for termination of…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-08-05 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady , Petr Novotný , Jiří Zárevúcky , Đorđe Žikelić

We present a new proof rule for verifying lower bounds on quantities of probabilistic programs. Our proof rule is not confined to almost-surely terminating programs -- as is the case for existing rules -- and can be used to establish…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-02-14 Shenghua Feng , Mingshuai Chen , Han Su , Benjamin Lucien Kaminski , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Naijun Zhan

The termination behavior of probabilistic programs depends on the outcomes of random assignments. Almost sure termination (AST) is concerned with the question whether a program terminates with probability one on all possible inputs.…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-01-29 Marcel Moosbrugger , Ezio Bartocci , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Laura Kovács

We introduce a method for proving almost sure termination in the context of lambda calculus with continuous random sampling and explicit recursion, based on ranking supermartingales. This result is extended in three ways. Antitone ranking…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-05-04 Andrew Kenyon-Roberts , Luke Ong

This paper considers the computational hardness of computing expected outcomes and deciding almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs. We show that deciding almost-sure termination and deciding whether the expected outcome of a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-10-28 Benjamin Lucien Kaminski , Joost-Pieter Katoen

The problem of determining whether a probabilistic program terminates almost surely (i.e.~with probability one) is undecidable, and actually $\Pi^0_2$-complete. For this reason, a growing literature has explored classes of programs for…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Ugo Dal Lago , Guido Fiorillo , Paolo Pistone

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

Probabilistic programs extend classical imperative programs with real-valued random variables and random branching. The most basic liveness property for such programs is the termination property. The qualitative (aka almost-sure)…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-09-14 Sheshansh Agrawal , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Petr Novotný

This paper considers the computational hardness of computing expected outcomes and deciding (universal) (positive) almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs. It is shown that computing lower and upper bounds of expected outcomes is…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-06-08 Benjamin Lucien Kaminski , Joost-Pieter Katoen

There are many evaluation strategies for term rewrite systems, but automatically proving termination or analyzing complexity is usually easiest for innermost rewriting. Several syntactic criteria exist when innermost termination implies…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-12-17 Jan-Christoph Kassing , Jürgen Giesl
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