A HOL Basis for Reasoning about Functional Programs

In [8] J. A. Robinson introduced a complete refutation procedure called resolution for first order predicate calculus. Resolution is based on ideas in Herbrand's Theorem, and provides a very convenient framework in which to search for a proof of a wff believed to be a theorem. Moreover, it has proved possible to formulate many refinements of resolution which are still complete but are more efficient, at least in many contexts. However, when efficiency is a prime consideration, the restriction to first order logic is unfortunate, since many statements of mathematics (and other disciplines) can be expressed more simply and naturally in higher order logic than in first order logic. Also, the fact that in higher order logic (as in many-sorted first order logic) there is an explicit syntactic distinction between expressions which denote different types of intuitive objects is of great value where matching is involved, since one is automatically prevented from trying to make certain inappropriate matches. (One may contrast this with the situation in which mathematical statements are expressed in the symbolism of axiomatic set theory.).

This paper presents a shallow embedding of a probabilistic functional programming language in higher order logic. The language features monadic sequencing, recursion, random sampling, failures and failure handling, and black-box access to oracles. Oracles are probabilistic functions which maintain hidden state between different invocations. To that end, we propose generative probabilistic systems as the semantic domain in which the operators of the language are defined. We prove that these operators are parametric and derive a relational program logic for reasoning about programs from parametricity. Several examples demonstrate that our language is suitable for conducting cryptographic proofs.

The higher-order logic found in proof assistants such as Coq and various HOL systems provides a convenient setting for the development and verification of pure functional programs. However, to efficiently run these programs, they must be converted (or "extracted") to functional programs in a programming language such as ML or Haskell. With current techniques, this step, which must be trusted, relates similar looking objects that have very different semantic definitions, such as the set-theoretic model of a logic and the operational semantics of a programming language. In this paper, we show how to increase the trustworthiness of this step with an automated technique. Given a functional program expressed in higher-order logic, our technique provides the corresponding program for a functional language defined with an operational semantics, and it provides a mechanically checked theorem relating the two. This theorem can then be used to transfer verified properties of the logical function to the program. We have implemented our technique in the HOL4 theorem prover, translating functions to a core subset of Standard ML, and have applied it to examples including functional data structures, a parser generator, cryptographic algorithms, and a garbage collector.

We describe a line of work that started in 2011 towards enriching Isabelle/HOL’s language with coinductive datatypes, which allow infinite values, and with a more expressive notion of inductive datatype than previously supported by any system based on higher-order logic. These (co)datatypes are complemented by definitional principles for (co)recursive functions and reasoning principles for (co)induction. In contrast with other systems offering codatatypes, no additional axioms or logic extensions are necessary with our approach.

A Type-Free System of Higher Order Logic for PROLOG

Definitions are traditionally considered to be a safe mechanism for introducing concepts on top of a logic known to be consistent. In contrast to arbitrary axioms, definitions should in principle be treatable as a form of abbreviation, and thus compiled away from the theory without losing provability. In particular, definitions should form a conservative extension of the pure logic. These properties are crucial for modern interactive theorem provers, since they ensure the consistency of the logic, as well as a valid environment for total/certified functional programming. We prove these properties, namely, safety and conservativity, for Higher-Order Logic (HOL), a logic implemented in several mainstream theorem provers and relied upon by thousands of users. Some unique features of HOL, such as the requirement to give non-emptiness proofs when defining new types and the impossibility to unfold type definitions, make the proof of these properties, and also the very formulation of safety, nontrivial. Our study also factors in the essential variation of HOL definitions featured by Isabelle/HOL, a popular member of the HOL-based provers family. The current work improves on recent results which showed a weaker property, consistency of Isabelle/HOL's definitions.

This paper introduces a new notation called S which is based on higher order logic. It has been developed specifically to support the practical application of formal methods in industrial scale projects. The development of S has occurred in the context of an investigation into the possibility of using formal specification techniques in the development of a $400 million air traffic control system. We were motivated to develop this notation after reaching the conclusion that existing notations such as Z are not suitable for use in this particular project. In addition to providing an introduction to S, this paper describes a public domain software tool called “Fuss” which has been implemented to support the use of S as a specification language.

Formal theories play crucial role in mathematics and were historically defined for classical predicate (first order logic) and consequently for other first and higher order logics, classical and non-classical.

We present a sound and complete proof technique, based on syntactic logical relations, for showing contextual equivalence of expressions in a λ-calculus with recursive types and impredicative universal and existential types. Our development builds on the step-indexed PER model of recursive types presented by Appel and McAllester. We have discovered that a direct proof of transitivity of that model does not go through, leaving the “PER” status of the model in question. We show how to extend the Appel-McAllester model to obtain a logical relation that we can prove is transitive, as well as sound and complete with respect to contextual equivalence. We then augment this model to support relational reasoning in the presence of quantified types.Step-indexed relations are indexed not just by types, but also by the number of steps available for future evaluation. This stratification is essential for handling various circularities, from recursive functions, to recursive types, to impredicative polymorphism. The resulting construction is more elementary than existing logical relations which require complex machinery such as domain theory, admissibility, syntactic minimal invariance, and ⊤ ⊤-closure.

Neo-Fregean logicists claim that Hume’s Principle (HP) may be taken as an implicit definition of cardinal number, true simply by fiat. A long-standing problem for neo-Fregean logicism is that HP is not deductively conservative over pure axiomatic second-order logic. This seems to preclude HP from being true by fiat. In this paper, we study Richard Kimberly Heck’s Two-Sorted Frege Arithmetic (2FA), a variation on HP which has been thought to be deductively conservative over second-order logic. We show that it isn’t. In fact, 2FA is not conservative over n-th order logic, for all $n \geq 2$ . It follows that in the usual one-sorted setting, HP is not deductively Field-conservative over second- or higher-order logic.

This article discusses the differences between two models of web documents: the traditional DOM (Document Object Model) and fDOM (formal DOM). The discussion begins with a description of Core DOM, which represents the structure of web documents as a hierarchical tree of nodes. Each node represents elements, attributes, and textual content, allowing for navigation, modification, and deletion of document components. The visual structure of DOM is illustrated using HTML code. The use of Isabelle/HOL, a higher-order logic system, for working with fDOM is then considered. This allows for the formalization of the mathematical properties of fDOM, ensuring their correctness and resistance to vulnerabilities. An example of code in Isabelle/HOL demonstrates how operations on web document elements can be defined and verified. The article also compares DOM and fDOM, highlighting differences in their approaches to representation and interaction with web documents. It is emphasized that while the traditional DOM provides a flexible interface for web documents, fDOM offers a more rigorous, mathematical representation, focused on precision and strictness. The discussion concludes with the advantages and disadvantages of fDOM. Among the advantages are formal verification, strong typing, consistent behavior, clear definitions, and enhanced security. However, increased complexity and development time, less flexibility, higher resource costs, and a steep learning curve are noted as disadvantages of fDOM. The conclusion emphasizes that fDOM offers a reliable, verified foundation for web applications but also introduces additional development requirements, making it particularly useful for applications where correctness and security are important.

A type theoretic programming language is introduced that is based on lambda calculus with coproducts, products and inductive types, and additionally allows the definition of recursive functions in the way that is common in most functional programming languages. A formal system is presented that checks whether such a definition is structurally recursive and a soundness theorem is shown for this system. Thus all functions passing this check are ensured to terminate on all inputs. For the moment only non-mutual recursive functions are considered.

Automatic parallelization of recursive functions with rewriting rules

In this thesis, we explore techniques for the development and verification of programs in a high-level, expressive, and safe programming language. Our programs can express problems over unbounded domains and over recursive and mutable data structures. We present an implementation language flexible enough to build interesting and useful systems. We mostly maintain a core shared language for the specifications and the implementation, with only a few extensions specific to expressing the specifications. Extensions of the core shared language include imperative features with state and side effects, which help when implementing efficient systems. Our language is a subset of the Scala programming language. Once verified, programs can be compiled and executed using the existing Scala tools. We present algorithms for verifying programs written in this language. We take a layer-based approach, where we reduce, at each step, the program to an equivalent program in a simpler language. We first purify functions by transforming away mutations into explicit return types in the functions' signatures. This step rewrites all mutations of data structures into cloning operations. We then translate local state into a purely functional code, hence eliminating all traces of imperative programming. The final language is a functional subset of Scala, on which we apply verification. We integrate our pipeline of translations into Leon, a verifier for Scala. We verify the core functional language by using an algorithm already developed inside Leon. The program is encoded into equivalent first-order logic formulas over a combination of theories and recursive functions. The formulas are eventually discharged to an external SMT solver. We extend this core language and the solving algorithm with support for both infinite-precision integers and bit-vectors. The algorithm takes into account the semantics gap between the two domains, and the programmer is ultimately responsible to use the proper type to represent the data. We build a reusable interface for SMT-LIB that enables us to swap solvers transparently in order to validate the formulas emitted by Leon. We experiment with writing solvers in Scala; they could offer both a better and safer integration with the rest of the system. We evaluate the cost of using a higher-order language to implement such solvers, traditionally written in C/C++. Finally, we experiment with the system by building fully working and verified applications. We rely on the intersection of many features including higher-order functions, mutable data structures, recursive functions, and nondeterministic environment dependencies, to build concise and verified applications.

Analytical approach of developing the expression of output of all-optical frequency encoded different logical units and a way-out to implement the logic gates