Lightweight verification of functional programs
Doctoral thesis, 2013
We have built several tools to help with testing and verifying functional programs. All three tools are based on QuickCheck properties. Our goal is to allow programmers to do more with QuickCheck properties than just test them.
The first tool is QuickSpec, which finds equational specifications, and can be used to help with writing a specification or for program understanding. On top of QuickSpec, we have built HipSpec, which proves properties about Haskell programs, and uses QuickSpec to prove the necessary lemmas. We also describe PULSE and eqc_par_statem, which together can be used to find race conditions in Erlang programs.
We believe that testable properties are a good basis for reasoning and verification, and that they give many of the benefits of formal verification without the cost of proof. The chief reason is that they are formal specifications for which the programmer can always get a counterexample when they are false. Furthermore, using testable properties allows us to write better tools. None of our tools would be possible if our properties were not testable.
We also present work on encoding types in first-order logic, an essential component when using first-order provers to reason about programs. Our encodings are simple but extremely efficient, as evidenced by benchmarks. We develop the theory behind sound type encodings, and have written tools that implement our ideas.
Author
Nicholas Smallbone
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Software Technology (Chalmers)
QuickSpec: Guessing Formal Specifications using Testing
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics),; Vol. 6143(2010)p. 6-21
Paper in proceeding
Encoding Monomorphic and Polymorphic Types
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics),; Vol. 7795(2013)p. 493-507
Paper in proceeding
Finding Race Conditions in Erlang with Quick Check and PULSE
ICFP'09: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming,; (2009)p. 149-160
Paper in proceeding
Sort it out with monotonicity: translating between many-sorted and unsorted first-order logic
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics),; Vol. 6803 LNAI(2011)p. 207-221
Paper in proceeding
Accelerating race condition detection through procrastination
Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop, Tokyo, 23 September 2011,; (2011)p. 14-22
Paper in proceeding
Automating Inductive Proofs using Theory Exploration
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics),; Vol. 7898(2013)p. 392-406
Paper in proceeding
Subject Categories
Algebra and Logic
Software Engineering
Areas of Advance
Information and Communication Technology
Roots
Basic sciences
ISBN
978-91-7385-841-0
Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 3522
Publisher
Chalmers
HC3, Hörsalsvägen 14
Opponent: Dr. K. Rustan M. Leino, Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA