Related papers: Transformational Verification of Quicksort
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
It is known that the verification of imperative, functional, and logic programs can be reduced to the satisfiability of constrained Horn clauses (CHCs), and this satisfiability check can be performed by using CHC solvers, such as Eldarica…
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…
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)…
Catamorphisms are functions that are recursively defined on list and trees and, in general, on Algebraic Data Types (ADTs), and are often used to compute suitable abstractions of programs that manipulate ADTs. Examples of catamorphisms…
We address the problem of checking the satisfiability of a set of constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) possibly including more than one query. We propose a transformation technique that takes as input a set of CHCs, including a set of queries,…
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.…
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…
Relational verification is a technique that aims at proving properties that relate two different program fragments, or two different program runs. It has been shown that constrained Horn clauses (CHCs) can effectively be used for relational…
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 $\{\varphi\}$…
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 address the problem of checking the satisfiability of Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) defined on Algebraic Data Types (ADTs), such as lists and trees. We propose a new technique for transforming CHCs defined on ADTs into CHCs where the…
We present a method for verifying partial correctness properties of imperative programs that manipulate integers and arrays by using techniques based on the transformation of constraint logic programs (CLP). We use CLP as a metalanguage for…