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This paper presents a focused literature survey on the use of large language models (LLM) to assist in writing formal specifications for software. A summary of thirty-five key papers is presented, including examples for specifying programs…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Arshad Beg , Diarmuid O'Donoghue , Rosemary Monahan

Large language models (LLMs) can generate executable code from natural language descriptions, but the resulting programs frequently contain bugs due to hallucinations. In the absence of formal specifications, existing approaches attempt to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Yihan Dai , Sijie Liang , Haotian Xu , Peichu Xie , Sergey Mechtaev

Large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-3 and GPT-4, have demonstrated exceptional performance in various natural language processing tasks and have shown the ability to solve certain reasoning problems. However, their reasoning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Adam Ishay , Zhun Yang , Joohyung Lee

We present \synver{}, a novel synthesis and verification framework for C programs, that deploys a Large Language Model (LLM) to search for a candidate program that satisfies the given specification. Our key idea is to impose syntactic and…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Prasita Mukherjee , Benjamin Delaware

Declarative specifications have a vital role to play in developing safe and dependable software systems. Writing specifications correctly, however, remains particularly challenging. This paper presents a controlled experiment on using large…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Yang Hong , Shan Jiang , Yulei Fu , Sarfraz Khurshid

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to generate requirements specifications, design documents, code, and test cases. In contrast, much less attention has been given to a more difficult assurance problem: statically verifying…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Zhi Quan Zhou , Dave Towey , Tsong Yueh Chen

Code-generating Large Language Models (LLMs) have become essential tools in modern software development, enhancing productivity and accelerating development. This paper aims to investigate the fine-tuning of code-generating LLMs using…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Marina Sakharova , Abhinav Anand , Mira Mezini

Large Language models (LLMs) have shown promise as generators of symbolic control policies, producing interpretable program-like representations through iterative search. However, these models are not capable of separating the functional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Carlo Bosio , Matteo Guarrera , Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli , Mark W. Mueller

Large Language Models (LLMs) are unable to reliably reason about specific physical systems. Attempts to imbue LLMs with knowledge of the necessary physics concepts have shown great promise, but explainability and validation remain open…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Sean Memery , Kartic Subr

Formal specification generation has recently drawn attention in software engineering as a way to improve program correctness without requiring manual annotations. Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in this area, but early…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Ragib Shahariar Ayon , Shibbir Ahmed

Verification-aware programming languages such as Dafny and F* provide means to formally specify and prove properties of a program. Although the problem of checking an implementation against a specification can be defined mechanically, there…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Shuvendu K. Lahiri

Temporal logics are powerful tools that are widely used for the synthesis and verification of reactive systems. The recent progress on Large Language Models (LLMs) has the potential to make the process of writing such specifications more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-12 William Murphy , Nikolaus Holzer , Nathan Koenig , Leyi Cui , Raven Rothkopf , Feitong Qiao , Mark Santolucito

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly applied to automate software engineering tasks, including the generation of UML class diagrams from natural language descriptions. While prior work demonstrates that LLMs can produce…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Rabia Iftikhar , Andreas Rausch

As large language models (LLMs) excel at code reasoning, a natural question arises: can an LLM execute programs (i.e., act as an interpreter) purely based on a programming language's formal semantics? If so, it will enable rapid prototyping…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Aditya Thimmaiah , Jiyang Zhang , Jayanth Srinivasa , Junyi Jessy Li , Milos Gligoric

Large language models (LLMs) can generate code from natural language, but the extent to which they capture intended program behavior remains unclear. Executable behavioral specifications, defined via preconditions and postconditions,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Zaoyu Chen , Jianbo Dai , Boyu Zhu , Jingdong Wang , Huiming Wang , Xin Xu , Haoyang Yuan , Zhijiang Guo , Xiao-Ming Wu

Symbolic execution is an important software analysis technique which benefits downstream tasks such as software testing and debugging. However, several limitations hinder symbolic execution from application on real-world software. One of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Wenhan Wang , Kaibo Liu , Zeyu Sun , An Ran Chen , Ge Li , Gang Huang , Lei Ma

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown human-like reasoning abilities but still struggle with complex logical problems. This paper introduces a novel framework, Logic-LM, which integrates LLMs with symbolic solvers to improve logical…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-10-20 Liangming Pan , Alon Albalak , Xinyi Wang , William Yang Wang

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into software development workflows, yet their behavior in structured, specification-driven processes remains poorly understood. This paper presents an empirical study design using…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Giovanni Rosa , David Moreno-Lumbreras , Gregorio Robles , Jesús M. González-Barahona

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional static program analysis methods, such as symbolic execution, offering the ability to reason over code directly without relying on theorem provers or SMT…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Yihe Li , Ruijie Meng , Gregory J. Duck

Large language models (LLMs) achieve astonishing results on a wide range of tasks. However, their formal reasoning ability still lags behind. A promising approach is Neurosymbolic LLM reasoning. It works by using LLMs as translators from…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Alexander Beiser , David Penz , Nysret Musliu