Partiality and recursion in interactive theorem provers – an overview
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2016

The use of interactive theorem provers to establish the correctness of critical parts of a software development or for formalizing mathematics is becoming more common and feasible in practice. However, most mature theorem provers lack a direct treatment of partial and general recursive functions; overcoming this weakness has been the objective of intensive research during the last decades. In this article, we review several techniques that have been proposed in the literature to simplify the formalization of partial and general recursive functions in interactive theorem provers. Moreover, we classify the techniques according to their theoretical basis and their practical use. This uniform presentation of the different techniques facilitates the comparison and highlights their commonalities and differences, as well as their relative advantages and limitations. We focus on theorem provers based on constructive type theory (in particular, Agda and Coq) and higher-order logic (in particular Isabelle/HOL). Other systems and logics are covered to a certain extent, but not exhaustively. In addition to the description of the techniques, we also demonstrate tools which facilitate working with the problematic functions in particular theorem provers.

Författare

Ana Bove

Chalmers, Data- och informationsteknik, Datavetenskap

Alexander Krauss

Technische Universität München

Matthieu Sozeau

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA)

Mathematical Structures in Computer Science

0960-1295 (ISSN) 1469-8072 (eISSN)

Vol. 26 1 38-88

Styrkeområden

Informations- och kommunikationsteknik

Ämneskategorier

Data- och informationsvetenskap

Datavetenskap (datalogi)

DOI

10.1017/S0960129514000115

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2023-09-25