Formal Methods in Software Engineering

From Hoare Logic to Matching Logic Reachability

Year2012
TypeConference
StatusProceedings
AuthorsGrigore Rosu, Andrei Stefanescu

Links

Abstract

Matching logic reachability has been recently proposed as an alternative program verification approach. Unlike Hoare logic, where one defines a language-specific proof system that needs to be proved sound for each language separately, matching logic reachability provides a *language-independent* and *sound* proof system that directly uses the trusted operational semantics of the language as axioms. Matching logic reachability thus has a clear practical advantage: it eliminates the need for an additional semantics of the same language in order to reason about programs, and implicitly eliminates the need for tedious soundness proofs. What is not clear, however, is whether matching logic reachability is as powerful as Hoare logic. This paper introduces a technique to mechanically translate Hoare logic proof derivations into equivalent matching logic reachability proof derivations. The presented technique has two consequences: first, it suggests that matching logic reachability has no theoretical limitation over Hoare logic; and second, it provides a new approach to prove Hoare logics sound.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{rosu-stefanescu-2012-fm, author = {Grigore Rosu and Andrei Stefanescu}, title = {From Hoare Logic to Matching Logic Reachability}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Formal Methods (FM'12)}, year = {2012}, series = {LNCS}, publisher = {Springer}, note = {To appear.}, url = {http://fsl.cs.illinois.edu/index.php/From_Hoare_Logic_to_Matching_Logic_Reachability [See it on FSL-UIUC web page]} }