Related papers: Contract Strengthening through Constrained Horn Cl…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
Verification problems of programs written in various paradigms (such as imperative, logic, concurrent, functional, and object-oriented ones) can be reduced to problems of solving Horn clause constraints on predicate variables that represent…
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 $\{\varphi\}$…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We present an approach to constrained Horn clause (CHC) verification combining three techniques: abstract interpretation over a domain of convex polyhedra, specialisation of the constraints in CHCs using abstract interpretation of…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…