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We present Ultimate TreeAutomizer, a solver for satisfiability of sets of constrained Horn clauses. Constrained Horn clauses (CHC) are a fragment of first order logic with attractive properties in terms of expressiveness and accessibility…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-07-10 Daniel Dietsch , Matthias Heizmann , Jochen Hoenicke , Alexander Nutz , Andreas Podelski

Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) are often used in automated program verification. Thus, techniques for (dis-)proving satisfiability of CHCs are a very active field of research. On the other hand, acceleration techniques for computing…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-07-17 Florian Frohn , Jürgen Giesl

In this paper, we show how the notion of tree dimension can be used in the verification of constrained Horn clauses (CHCs). The dimension of a tree is a numerical measure of its branching complexity and the concept here applies to Horn…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-03-07 Bishoksan Kafle , John P. Gallagher , Pierre Ganty

Higher-order constrained Horn clauses (HoCHC) are a semantically-invariant system of higher-order logic modulo theories. With semi-decidable unsolvability over a semi-decidable background theory, HoCHC is suitable for safety verification.…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-09-13 Jerome Jochems

Despite the recent progress of automated program verification techniques, fully automated verification of programs manipulating recursive data structures remains a challenge. We introduce solvable tuple patterns (STPs) and conjunctive STPs…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Naoki Kobayashi , Ryosuke Sato , Ayumi Shinohara , Ryo Yoshinaka

We propose a novel approach to satisfiability checking of Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) over Algebraic Data Types (ADTs). CHC-based automated verification has gained considerable attention in recent years, leading to the development of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Hiroyuki Katsura , Naoki Kobayashi , Ken Sakayori , Ryosuke Sato

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…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-04-18 Bishoksan Kafle , John P. Gallagher , Graeme Gange , Peter Schachte , Harald Sondergaard , Peter J. Stuckey

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 $\{\varphi\}$…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-02-19 Emanuele De Angelis , Fabio Fioravanti , Alberto Pettorossi , Maurizio Proietti

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…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2016-07-18 Tewodros A. Beyene , Corneliu Popeea , Andrey Rybalchenko

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.…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2015-10-01 David Monniaux , Laure Gonnord

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…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-08-02 Toby Cathcart Burn , C. -H. Luke Ong , Steven J. Ramsay

Verification conditions (VCs) are logical formulas whose satisfiability guarantees program correctness. We consider VCs in the form of constrained Horn clauses (CHC) which are automatically generated from the encoding of (an interpreter of)…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2016-07-18 Emanuele De Angelis , Fabio Fioravanti , Alberto Pettorossi , Maurizio Proietti

For high-assurance software, source-level reasoning is insufficient: we need binary-level guarantees. Despite constrained Horn clause (CHC) solving being one of the most popular forms of automated verification, prior work has not evaluated…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Aaron Bembenek , Toby Murray

It is well-known that the verification of partial correctness properties of imperative programs can be reduced to the satisfiability problem for constrained Horn clauses (CHCs). However, state-of-the-art solvers for CHCs (CHC solvers) based…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-06-29 Emanuele De Angelis , Fabio Fioravanti , Alberto Pettorossi , Maurizio Proietti

Building on the successes of satisfiability modulo theories (SMT), Bj{\o}rner et al. initiated a research programme advocating Horn constraints as a suitable basis for automatic program verification. The notion of first-order constrained…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2019-02-25 Long Pham , Steven J. Ramsay , C. -H. Luke Ong

We are interested in proving satisfiability of Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) over Algebraic Data Types (ADTs). We propose to prove satisfiability by building a tree automaton recognizing the Herbrand model of the CHCs. If such an…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Gregoire Maire , Thomas Genet

We design learning algorithms for synthesizing invariants using Horn implication counterexamples (Horn-ICE), extending the ICE-learning model. In particular, we describe a decision-tree learning algorithm that learns from Horn-ICE samples,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-11-12 Deepak D'Souza , P. Ezudheen , Pranav Garg , P. Madhusudan , Daniel Neider

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…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-06-02 Andrey Rybalchenko

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…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-09-13 Temesghen Kahsai , German Vidal

We report on work in progress on automatic procedures for proving properties of programs written in higher-order functional languages. Our approach encodes higher-order programs directly as first-order SMT problems over Horn clauses. It is…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2013-06-25 Nikolaj Bjorner , Ken McMillan , Andrey Rybalchenko