On the one hand, termination analysis of logic programs is now a fairly established research topic within the logic programming community. On the other hand, non-termination analysis seems to remain a much less attractive subject. If we divide this line of research into two kinds of approaches: dynamic versus static analysis, this paper belongs to the latter. It proposes a criterion for detecting non-terminating atomic queries with respect to binary CLP rules, which strictly generalizes our previous works on this subject. We give a generic operational definition and an implemented logical form of this criterion. Then we show that the logical form is correct and complete with respect to the operational definition.
This paper focuses on the inference of modes for which a logic program is guaranteed to terminate. This generalises traditional termination analysis where an analyser tries to verify termination for a specified mode. Our contribution is a methodology in which components of traditional termination analysis are combined with backwards analysis to obtain an analyser for termination inference. We identify a condition on the components of the analyser which guarantees that termination inference will infer all modes which can be checked to terminate. The application of this methodology to enhance a …
On one hand, termination analysis of logic programs is now a fairly established research topic within the logic programming community. On the other hand, non-termination analysis seems to remain a much less attractive subject. If we divide this line of research into two kinds of approaches: dynamic versus static analysis, this paper belongs to the latter. It proposes a criterion for detecting non-terminating atomic queries with respect to binary CLP clauses, which strictly generalizes our previous works on this subject. We give a generic operational definition and a logical form of this criter…
We present a new approach to termination analysis of logic programs. The essence of the approach is that we make use of general term-orderings (instead of level mappings), like it is done in transformational approaches to logic program termination analysis, but that we apply these orderings directly to the logic program and not to the term-rewrite system obtained through some transformation. We define some variants of acceptability, based on general term-orderings, and show how they are equivalent to LD-termination. We develop a demand driven, constraint-based approach to verify these acceptab…
We present a set of rules for compiling a Dalvik bytecode program into a logic program with array constraints. Non-termination of the resulting program entails that of the original one, hence the techniques we have presented before for proving non-termination of constraint logic programs can be used for proving non-termination of Dalvik programs.
Termination is an important and well-studied property for logic programs. However, almost all approaches for automated termination analysis focus on definite logic programs, whereas real-world Prolog programs typically use the cut operator. We introduce a novel pre-processing method which automatically transforms Prolog programs into logic programs without cuts, where termination of the cut-free program implies termination of the original program. Hence after this pre-processing, any technique for proving termination of definite logic programs can be applied. We implemented this pre-processing…
Several authors devised type-based termination criteria for ML-like languages allowing non-structural recursive calls. We extend these works to general rewriting and dependent types, hence providing a powerful termination criterion for the combination of rewriting and beta-reduction in the Calculus of Constructions.
Rewriting is a framework for reasoning about functional programming. The dependency pair criterion is a well-known mechanism to analyze termination of term rewriting systems. Functional specifications with an operational semantics based on evaluation are related, in the rewriting framework, to the innermost reduction relation. This paper presents a PVS formalization of the dependency pair criterion for the innermost reduction relation: a term rewriting system is innermost terminating if and only if it is terminating by the dependency pair criterion. The paper also discusses the application of …
This paper describes a general framework for automatic termination analysis of logic programs, where we understand by ``termination'' the finitenes s of the LD-tree constructed for the program and a given query. A general property of mappings from a certain subset of the branches of an infinite LD-tree into a finite set is proved. From this result several termination theorems are derived, by using different finite sets. The first two are formulated for the predicate dependency and atom dependency graphs. Then a general result for the case of the query-mapping pairs relevant to a program is pro…
The termination problem of a logic program can be addressed in either a static or a dynamic way. A static approach performs termination analysis at compile time, while a dynamic approach characterizes and tests termination of a logic program by applying a loop checking technique. In this paper, we present a novel dynamic approach to termination analysis for general logic programs with moded queries. We address several interesting questions, including how to formulate an SLDNF-derivation for a moded query, how to characterize an infinite SLDNF-derivation with a moded query, and how to apply a l…
We present a static analysis technique for non-termination inference of logic programs. Our framework relies on an extension of the subsumption test, where some specific argument positions can be instantiated while others are generalized. We give syntactic criteria to statically identify such argument positions from the text of a program. Atomic left looping queries are generated bottom-up from selected subsets of the binary unfoldings of the program of interest. We propose a set of correct algorithms for automating the approach. Then, non-termination inference is tailored to attempt proofs of…
Programs for multiprocessor machines commonly perform busy-waiting for synchronisation. In this paper, we make a first step towards proving termination of such programs. We approximate (i) arbitrary waitable events by abrupt program termination and (ii) busy-waiting for events by busy-waiting to be abruptly terminated. We propose a separation logic for modularly verifying termination (under fair scheduling) of programs where some threads eventually abruptly terminate the program, and other threads busy-wait for this to happen.
Programs for multiprocessor machines commonly perform busy-waiting for synchronisation. In this paper, we make a first step towards proving termination of such programs. We approximate (i) arbitrary waitable events by abrupt program termination and (ii) busy-waiting for events by busy-waiting to be abruptly terminated. We propose a separation logic for modularly verifying termination (under fair scheduling) of programs where some threads eventually abruptly terminate the program, and other threads busy-wait for this to happen.
We present cTI, the first system for universal left-termination inference of logic programs. Termination inference generalizes termination analysis and checking. Traditionally, a termination analyzer tries to prove that a given class of queries terminates. This class must be provided to the system, for instance by means of user annotations. Moreover, the analysis must be redone every time the class of queries of interest is updated. Termination inference, in contrast, requires neither user annotations nor recomputation. In this approach, terminating classes for all predicates are inferred at o…
Compiler correctness proofs for higher-order concurrent languages are difficult: they involve establishing a termination-preserving refinement between a concurrent high-level source language and an implementation that uses low-level shared memory primitives. However, existing logics for proving concurrent refinement either neglect properties such as termination, or only handle first-order state. In this paper, we address these limitations by extending Iris, a recent higher-order concurrent separation logic, with support for reasoning about termination-preserving refinements. To demonstrate the…
State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院软件研究所计算机科学国家重点实验室）；Department of Computer Science, Celestijnenlaan 200 A, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium（计算机科学系）
We present a heuristic framework for attacking the undecidable termination problem of logic programs, as an alternative to current termination/non-termination proof approaches. We introduce an idea of termination prediction, which predicts termination of a logic program in case that neither a termination nor a non-termination proof is applicable. We establish a necessary and sufficient characterization of infinite (generalized) SLDNF-derivations with arbitrary (concrete or moded) queries, and develop an algorithm that predicts termination of general logic programs with arbitrary non-flounderin…
RWTH Aachen（亚琛工业大学）；TU Eindhoven（埃因霍温理工大学）；University of Innsbruck（因斯布鲁克大学）
There are two kinds of approaches for termination analysis of logic programs: "transformational" and "direct" ones. Direct approaches prove termination directly on the basis of the logic program. Transformational approaches transform a logic program into a term rewrite system (TRS) and then analyze termination of the resulting TRS instead. Thus, transformational approaches make all methods previously developed for TRSs available for logic programs as well. However, the applicability of most existing transformations is quite restricted, as they can only be used for certain subclasses of logic p…
Our goal is to study the feasibility of porting termination analysis techniques developed for one programming paradigm to another paradigm. In this paper, we show how to adapt termination analysis techniques based on polynomial interpretations - very well known in the context of term rewrite systems (TRSs) - to obtain new (non-transformational) ter- mination analysis techniques for definite logic programs (LPs). This leads to an approach that can be seen as a direct generalization of the traditional techniques in termination analysis of LPs, where linear norms and level mappings are used. Our …
We present a new characterization of termination of general logic programs. Most existing termination analysis approaches rely on some static information about the structure of the source code of a logic program, such as modes/types, norms/level mappings, models/interargument relations, and the like. We propose a dynamic approach which employs some key dynamic features of an infinite (generalized) SLDNF-derivation, such as repetition of selected subgoals and recursive increase in term size. We also introduce a new formulation of SLDNF-trees, called generalized SLDNF-trees. Generalized SLDNF-tr…
In the past years, analyzers have been introduced to detect classes of non-terminating queries for definite logic programs. Although these non-termination analyzers have shown to be rather precise, their applicability on real-life Prolog programs is limited because most Prolog programs use non-logical features. As a first step towards the analysis of Prolog programs, this paper presents a non-termination condition for Logic Programs containing integer arithmetics. The analyzer is based on our non-termination analyzer presented at ICLP 2009. The analysis starts from a class of queries and infer…
Fair termination is the property of programs that may diverge "in principle" but that terminate "in practice", i.e. under suitable fairness assumptions concerning the resolution of non-deterministic choices. We study a conservative extension of $μ$MALL$^\infty$, the infinitary proof system of the multiplicative additive fragment of linear logic with least and greatest fixed points, such that cut elimination corresponds to fair termination. Proof terms are processes of $π$LIN, a variant of the linear $π$-calculus with (co)recursive types into which binary and (some) multiparty sessions can be e…
We present verification methods for logic programs with delay declarations. The verified properties are termination and freedom from errors related to built-ins. Concerning termination, we present two approaches. The first approach tries to eliminate the well-known problem of speculative output bindings. The second approach is based on identifying the predicates for which the textual position of an atom using this predicate is irrelevant with respect to termination. Three features are distinctive of this work: it allows for predicates to be used in several modes; it shows that block declaratio…
We report on intermediate results of our research on reasoning about liveness properties in addition to deep correctness properties for an imperative, concurrent programming language with a higher-order store. At present, we focus on one particular liveness property, namely termination. By guaranteeing termination we can strengthen statements of partial correctness to total correctness. This is achieved by the classic approach of turning termination into a safety property. In particular we extend the programming language under consideration with call permissions, which have been shown to enabl…
Automated analysis of recursive derivations in logic programming is known to be a hard problem. Both termination and non-termination are undecidable problems in Turing-complete languages. However, some declarative languages offer a practical work-around for this problem, by making a clear distinction between whether a program is meant to be understood inductively or coinductively. For programs meant to be understood inductively, termination must be guaranteed, whereas for programs meant to be understood coinductively, productive non-termination (or "productivity") must be ensured. In practice,…
In logic programming, dynamic scheduling refers to a situation where the selection of the atom in each resolution (computation) step is determined at runtime, as opposed to a fixed selection rule such as the left-to-right one of Prolog. This has applications e.g. in parallel programming. A mechanism to control dynamic scheduling is provided in existing languages in the form of delay declarations. Input-consuming derivations were introduced to describe dynamic scheduling while abstracting from the technical details. In this paper, we first formalise the relationship between delay declarations a…
The term {\em meta-programming} refers to the ability of writing programs that have other programs as data and exploit their semantics. The aim of this paper is presenting a methodology allowing us to perform a correct termination analysis for a broad class of practical meta-interpreters, including negation and performing different tasks during the execution. It is based on combining the power of general orderings, used in proving termination of term-rewrite systems and programs, and on the well-known acceptability condition, used in proving termination of logic programs. The methodology estab…
We introduce a fully automated static analysis that takes a sequential Java bytecode program P as input and attempts to prove that there exists an infinite execution of P. The technique consists in compiling P into a constraint logic program P_CLP and in proving non-termination of P_CLP; when P consists of instructions that are exactly compiled into constraints, the non-termination of P_CLP entails that of P. Our approach can handle method calls; to the best of our knowledge, it is the first static approach for Java bytecode able to prove the existence of infinite recursions. We have implement…
We propose an automated method for checking the validity of a formula of HFL(Z), a higher-order logic with fixpoint operators and integers. Combined with Kobayashi et al.'s reduction from higher-order program verification to HFL(Z) validity checking, our method yields a fully automated, uniform verification method for arbitrary temporal properties of higher-order functional programs expressible in the modal mu-calculus, including termination, non-termination, fair termination, fair non-termination, and also branching-time properties. We have implemented our method and obtained promising experi…
We present a new approach to termination analysis of logic programs. The essence of the approach is that we make use of general orderings (instead of level mappings), like it is done in transformational approaches to logic program termination analysis, but we apply these orderings directly to the logic program and not to the term-rewrite system obtained through some transformation. We define some variants of acceptability, based on general orderings, and show how they are equivalent to LD-termination. We develop a demand driven, constraint-based approach to verify these acceptability-variants.…
Client-server sessions are based on a variation of the traditional interpretation of linear logic propositions as session types in which non-linear channels (those regulating the interaction between a pool of clients and a single server) are typed by coexponentials instead of the usual exponentials. Coexponentials enable the modeling of racing interactions, whereby clients compete to interact with a single server whose internal state (and thus the offered service) may change as the server processes requests sequentially. In this work we present a fair termination result for CSLL$^\infty$, a co…
Recent developments in termination analysis for declarative programs emphasize the use of appropriate models for the logical theory representing the program at stake as a generic approach to prove termination of declarative programs. In this setting, Order-Sorted First-Order Logic provides a powerful framework to represent declarative programs. It also provides a target logic to obtain models for other logics via transformations. We investigate the automatic generation of numerical models for order-sorted first-order logics and its use in program analysis, in particular in termination analysis…
For logic programs with arithmetic predicates, showing termination is not easy, since the usual order for the integers is not well-founded. A new method, easily incorporated in the TermiLog system for automatic termination analysis, is presented for showing termination in this case. The method consists of the following steps: First, a finite abstract domain for representing the range of integers is deduced automatically. Based on this abstraction, abstract interpretation is applied to the program. The result is a finite number of atoms abstracting answers to queries which are used to extend th…
We present TaDA Live, a concurrent separation logic for reasoning compositionally about the termination of blocking fine-grained concurrent programs. The crucial challenge is how to deal with abstract atomic blocking: that is, abstract atomic operations that have blocking behaviour arising from busy-waiting patterns as found in, for example, fine-grained spin locks. Our fundamental innovation is with the design of abstract specifications that capture this blocking behaviour as liveness assumptions on the environment. We design a logic that can reason about the termination of clients which use …
Programs for multiprocessor machines commonly perform busy waiting for synchronization. We propose the first separation logic for modularly verifying termination of such programs under fair scheduling. Our logic requires the proof author to associate a ghost signal with each busy-waiting loop and allows such loops to iterate while their corresponding signal $s$ is not set. The proof author further has to define a well-founded order on signals and to prove that if the looping thread holds an obligation to set a signal $s^\prime$, then $s^\prime$ is ordered above $s$. By using conventional share…
State of the art analyzers in the Logic Programming (LP) paradigm are nowadays mature and sophisticated. They allow inferring a wide variety of global properties including termination, bounds on resource consumption, etc. The aim of this work is to automatically transfer the power of such analysis tools for LP to the analysis and verification of Java bytecode (JVML). In order to achieve our goal, we rely on well-known techniques for meta-programming and program specialization. More precisely, we propose to partially evaluate a JVML interpreter implemented in LP together with (an LP representat…
We present a new approach to termination analysis of numerical computations in logic programs. Traditional approaches fail to analyse them due to non well-foundedness of the integers. We present a technique that allows to overcome these difficulties. Our approach is based on transforming a program in way that allows integrating and extending techniques originally developed for analysis of numerical computations in the framework of query-mapping pairs with the well-known framework of acceptability. Such an integration not only contributes to the understanding of termination behaviour of numeric…
We present a new approach to termination analysis of numerical computations in logic programs. Traditional approaches fail to analyse them due to non well-foundedness of the integers. We present a technique that allows overcoming these difficulties. Our approach is based on transforming a program in a way that allows integrating and extending techniques originally developed for analysis of numerical computations in the framework of query-mapping pairs with the well-known framework of acceptability. Such an integration not only contributes to the understanding of termination behaviour of numeri…
The notion of program sensitivity (aka Lipschitz continuity) specifies that changes in the program input result in proportional changes to the program output. For probabilistic programs the notion is naturally extended to expected sensitivity. A previous approach develops a relational program logic framework for proving expected sensitivity of probabilistic while loops, where the number of iterations is fixed and bounded. In this work, we consider probabilistic while loops where the number of iterations is not fixed, but randomized and depends on the initial input values. We present a sound ap…
The paradigm of Tabled Logic Programming (TLP) is now supported by a number of Prolog systems, including XSB, YAP Prolog, B-Prolog, Mercury, ALS, and Ciao. The reasons for this are partly theoretical: tabling ensures termination and optimal known complexity for queries to a large class of programs. However the overriding reasons are practical. TLP allows sophisticated programs to be written concisely and efficiently, especially when mechanisms such as tabled negation and call and answer subsumption are supported. As a result TLP has now been used in a variety of applications from program analy…
Quasi-interpretations are a technique to guarantee complexity bounds on first-order functional programs: with termination orderings they give in particular a sufficient condition for a program to be executable in polynomial time, called here the P-criterion. We study properties of the programs satisfying the P-criterion, in order to better understand its intensional expressive power. Given a program on binary lists, its blind abstraction is the nondeterministic program obtained by replacing lists by their lengths (natural numbers). A program is blindly polynomial if its blind abstraction termi…
We propose abstract compilation for precise static type analysis of object-oriented languages based on coinductive logic programming. Source code is translated to a logic program, then type-checking and inference problems amount to queries to be solved with respect to the resulting logic program. We exploit a coinductive semantics to deal with infinite terms and proofs produced by recursive types and methods. Thanks to the recent notion of structural resolution for coinductive logic programming, we are able to infer very precise type information, including a class of irrational recursive types…
In this work, we consider the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs that asks whether a given probabilistic program terminates with probability 1. Scalable approaches for program analysis often rely on modularity as their theoretical basis. In non-probabilistic programs, the classical variant rule (V-rule) of Floyd-Hoare logic provides the foundation for modular analysis. Extension of this rule to almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs is quite tricky, and a probabilistic variant was proposed in [Fioriti and Hermanns 2015]. While the proposed probabilistic varia…
The size-change abstraction (SCA) is an important program abstraction for termination analysis, which has been successfully implemented in many tools for functional and logic programs. In this paper, we demonstrate that SCA is also a highly effective abstract domain for the bound analysis of imperative programs. We have implemented a bound analysis tool based on SCA for imperative programs. We abstract programs in a pathwise and context dependent manner, which enables our tool to analyze real-world programs effectively. Our work shows that SCA captures many of the essential ideas of previous t…
This paper is concerned with rule-based programs that go wrong. The unwanted behavior of rule applications is non-termination or failure of a computation. We propose a static program analysis of the non-termination problem for recursion in the Constraint Handling Rules (CHR) language. CHR is an advanced concurrent declarative language involving constraint reasoning. It has been closely related to many other rule-based approaches, so the results are of a more general interest. In such languages, non-termination is due to infinite applications of recursive rules. Failure is due to accumulation o…
We advocate a declarative approach to proving properties of logic programs. Total correctness can be separated into correctness, completeness and clean termination; the latter includes non-floundering. Only clean termination depends on the operational semantics, in particular on the selection rule. We show how to deal with correctness and completeness in a declarative way, treating programs only from the logical point of view. Specifications used in this approach are interpretations (or theories). We point out that specifications for correctness may differ from those for completeness, as usual…
Program specialisation aims at improving the overall performance of programs by performing source to source transformations. A common approach within functional and logic programming, known respectively as partial evaluation and partial deduction, is to exploit partial knowledge about the input. It is achieved through a well-automated application of parts of the Burstall-Darlington unfold/fold transformation framework. The main challenge in developing systems is to design automatic control that ensures correctness, efficiency, and termination. This survey and tutorial presents the main develop…
We study the properties of input-consuming derivations of moded logic programs. Input-consuming derivations can be used to model the behavior of logic programs using dynamic scheduling and employing constructs such as delay declarations. We consider the class of nicely-moded programs and queries. We show that for these programs a weak version of the well-known switching lemma holds also for input-consuming derivations. Furthermore, we show that, under suitable conditions, there exists an algebraic characterization of termination of input-consuming derivations.
LLMs versus the Halting Problem: Characterizing Program Termination Reasoning
FAIR Team, Meta AI（Meta AI FAIR 团队）；The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel（耶路撒冷希伯来大学）；Bloomberg, New York, USA（彭博社，纽约，美国）；Imperial College London, UK（伦敦帝国理工学院，英国）；University College London, UK（伦敦大学学院，英国）
Quantitative separation logic (QSL) is an extension of separation logic (SL) for the verification of probabilistic pointer programs. In QSL, formulae evaluate to real numbers instead of truth values, e.g., the probability of memory-safe termination in a given symbolic heap. As with \SL, one of the key problems when reasoning with QSL is \emph{entailment}: does a formula f entail another formula g? We give a generic reduction from entailment checking in QSL to entailment checking in SL. This allows to leverage the large body of SL research for the automated verification of probabilistic pointer…
In this paper we introduce a class of constraint logic programs such that their termination can be proved by using affine level mappings. We show that membership to this class is decidable in polynomial time.
An important question for a probabilistic program is whether the probability mass of all its diverging runs is zero, that is that it terminates "almost surely". Proving that can be hard, and this paper presents a new method for doing so; it is expressed in a program logic, and so applies directly to source code. The programs may contain both probabilistic- and demonic choice, and the probabilistic choices may depend on the current state. As do other researchers, we use variant functions (a.k.a. "super-martingales") that are real-valued and probabilistically might decrease on each loop iteratio…
We consider a simple extension of logic programming where variables may range over goals and goals may be arguments of predicates. In this language we can write logic programs which use goals as data. We give practical evidence that, by exploiting this capability when transforming programs, we can improve program efficiency. We propose a set of program transformation rules which extend the familiar unfolding and folding rules and allow us to manipulate clauses with goals which occur as arguments of predicates. In order to prove the correctness of these transformation rules, we formally define …
Interactive systems with registers and voices (shortly, "rv-systems") are a model for interactive computing obtained closing register machines with respect to a space-time duality transformation ("voices" are the time-dual counterparts of "registers"). In the same vain, AGAPIA v0.1, a structured programming language for rv-systems, is the space-time dual closure of classical while programs (over a specific type of data). Typical AGAPIA programs describe open processes located at various sites and having their temporal windows of adequate reaction to the environment. The language naturally supp…
