Lics

IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science

Paper: Transition Invariants (at LICS 2004)

Abstract

Proof rules for program verification rely on auxiliary assertions. We propose a (sound and relatively complete) proof rule whose auxiliary assertions are transition invariants. A transition invariant of a program is a binary relation over program states that contains the transitive closure of the transition relation of the program. A relation is disjunctively well-founded if it is a finite union of well-founded relations. We characterize the validity of termination or another liveness property by the existence of a disjunctively well-founded transition invariant. The main contribution of our proof rule lies in its potential for automation via abstract interpretation.

BibTeX

 @InProceedings{PodelskiRybalchenko-TransitionInvariant,
 author = 	 {Andreas Podelski and Andrey Rybalchenko},
 title = 	 {Transition Invariants},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2004)},
 year =	 {2004},
 month =	 {July}, 
 pages = {32--41},
 location = {Turku, Finland}, 
 publisher =	 {IEEE Computer Society Press}
 }