Related papers: RHLE: Modular Deductive Verification of Relational…

Formal verification techniques have been playing an important role in pre-silicon validation processes. One of the most important points considered in performing formal verification is to define good verification scopes; we should define…

Reactive programs are ubiquitous in modern applications, and so verification is highly desirable. We present a verification strategy for reactive programs with a large or infinite state space utilising algebraic laws for reactive relations.…

We propose relational linear programming, a simple framework for combing linear programs (LPs) and logic programs. A relational linear program (RLP) is a declarative LP template defining the objective and the constraints through the logical…

We study transformational program logics for correctness and incorrectness that we extend to explicitly handle both termination and nontermination. We show that the logics are abstract interpretations of the right image transformer for a…

We give a relational and a weakest precondition semantics for "knowledge-based programs", i.e., programs that restrict observability of variables so as to richly express changes in the knowledge of agents who can or cannot observe said…

Relative correctness is the property of a program to be more-correct than another with respect to a given specification. Whereas the traditional definition of (absolute) correctness divides candidate program into two classes (correct, and…

Several relational program logics have been introduced for integrating reasoning about relational properties of programs and measurement of quantitative difference between computational effects. Towards a general framework for such logics,…

Verifying specifications for large-scale modern engineering systems can be a time-consuming task, as most formal verification methods are limited to systems of modest size. Recently, contract-based design and verification has been proposed…

Proof by coupling is a classical proof technique for establishing probabilistic properties of two probabilistic processes, like stochastic dominance and rapid mixing of Markov chains. More recently, couplings have been investigated as a…

We study the classical problem of verifying programs with respect to formal specifications given in the linear temporal logic (LTL). We first present novel sound and complete witnesses for LTL verification over imperative programs. Our…

We propose a modular method for proving termination of general logic programs (i.e., logic programs with negation). It is based on the notion of acceptable programs, but it allows us to prove termination in a truly modular way. We consider…

Optimizing compilers have become a cornerstone for high-performance program generation in research and industry. Optimizations, including those implemented manually by a user and those target-specific and non-target-specific, are used to…

Temporal logics stands for a widely adopted family of formalisms for the verification of computational devices, enriching propositional logics by operators predicating on the step-wise behaviour of a system. Its quantified extensions allow…

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms interact with their environment in a trial-and-error fashion. Such interactions can be expensive, inefficient, and timely when learning on a physical system rather than in a simulation. This work…

We present a new approach to automated reasoning about higher-order programs by endowing symbolic execution with a notion of higher-order, symbolic values. Our approach is sound and relatively complete with respect to a first-order solver…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have made significant progress in code generation, offering developers groundbreaking automated programming support. However, LLMs often generate code that is syntactically correct and even semantically…

Software contracts allow programmers to state rich program properties using the full expressive power of an object language. However, since they are enforced at runtime, monitoring contracts imposes significant overhead and delays error…

Deductive verification of concurrent programs under weak memory has thus far been limited to simple programs over a monolithic state space. For scalability, we also require modular techniques with verifiable library abstractions. This paper…

Verifying whether a procedure is observationally pure is useful in many software engineering scenarios. An observationally pure procedure always returns the same value for the same argument, and thus mimics a mathematical function. The…

Unintended failures during a computation are painful but frequent during software development. Failures due to external reasons (e.g., missing files, no permissions) can be caught by exception handlers. Programming failures, such as calling…