We develop a doubly-exponential decision procedure for the satisfiability problem of guarded separation logic -- a novel fragment of separation logic featuring user-supplied inductive predicates, Boolean connectives, and separating connectives, including restricted (guarded) versions of negation, magic wand, and septraction. Moreover, we show that dropping the guards for any of the above connectives leads to an undecidable fragment. We further apply our decision procedure to reason about entailments in the popular symbolic heap fragment of separation logic. In particular, we obtain a doubly-exponential decision procedure for entailments between (quantifier-free) symbolic heaps with inductive predicate definitions of bounded treewidth (SLIDbtw) - one of the most expressive decidable fragments of separation logic. Together with the recently shown 2ExpTime-hardness for entailments in said fragment, we conclude that the entailment problem for SLIDbtw is 2ExpTime-complete - thereby closing a previously open complexity gap.
The entailment between separation logic formulae with inductive predicates, also known as symbolic heaps, has been shown to be decidable for a large class of inductive definitions. Recently, a 2-EXPTIME algorithm was proposed and an EXPTIME-hard bound was established; however no precise lower bound is known. In this paper, we show that deciding entailment between predicate atoms is 2-EXPTIME-hard. The proof is based on a reduction from the membership problem for exponential-space bounded alternating Turing machines.
Separation Logic (SL) with inductive definitions is a natural formalism for specifying complex recursive data structures, used in compositional verification of programs manipulating such structures. The key ingredient of any automated verification procedure based on SL is the decidability of the entailment problem. In this work, we reduce the entailment problem for a non-trivial subset of SL describing trees (and beyond) to the language inclusion of tree automata (TA). Our reduction provides tight complexity bounds for the problem and shows that entailment in our fragment is EXPTIME-complete. …
The entailment problem $φ\models ψ$ in Separation Logic \cite{IshtiaqOHearn01,Reynolds02}, between separated conjunctions of equational ($x \iseq y$ and $x \not\iseq y$), spatial ($x \mapsto (y_1,\ldots,y_\rank)$) and predicate ($p(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$) atoms, interpreted by a finite set of inductive rules, is undecidable in general. Certain restrictions on the set of inductive definitions lead to decidable classes of entailment problems. Currently, there are two such decidable classes, based on two restrictions, called \emph{establishment} \cite{IosifRogalewiczSimacek13,KatelaanMathejaZuleger19,P…
In this paper we develop cyclic proof systems for the problem of inclusion between the least sets of models of mutually recursive predicates, when the ground constraints in the inductive definitions belong to the quantifier-free fragments of (i) First Order Logic with the canonical Herbrand interpretation and (ii) Separation Logic, respectively. Inspired by classical automata-theoretic techniques of proving language inclusion between tree automata, we give a small set of inference rules, that are proved to be sound and complete, under certain semantic restrictions, involving the set of constra…
We define a class of Separation Logic formulae, whose entailment problem: given formulae $ϕ, ψ_1, \ldots, ψ_n$, is every model of $ϕ$ a model of some $ψ_i$? is 2EXPTIME-complete. The formulae in this class are existentially quantified separating conjunctions involving predicate atoms, interpreted by the least sets of store-heap structures that satisfy a set of inductive rules, which is also part of the input to the entailment problem. Previous work consider established sets of rules, meaning that every existentially quantified variable in a rule must eventually be bound to an allocated locatio…
Guarded recursion is a powerful modal approach to recursion that can be seen as an abstract form of step-indexing. It is currently used extensively in separation logic to model programming languages with advanced features by solving domain equations also with negative occurrences. In its multi-clocked version, guarded recursion can also be used to program with and reason about coinductive types, encoding the productivity condition required for recursive definitions in types. This paper presents the first type theory combining multi-clocked guarded recursion with the features of Cubical Type Th…
This paper presents an approach to lemma synthesis to support advanced inductive entailment procedures based on separation logic. We first propose a mechanism where lemmas are automatically proven and systematically applied. The lemmas may include universal guard and/or unknown predicate. While the former is critical for expressivity, the latter is essential for supporting relationships between multiple predicates. We further introduce lemma synthesis to support (i) automated inductive reasoning together with frame inference and (ii) theorem exploration. For (i) we automatically discover and p…
The Guarded Negation Fragment (GNFO) is a fragment of first-order logic that contains all positive existential formulas, can express the first-order translations of basic modal logic and of many description logics, along with many sentences that arise in databases. It has been shown that the syntax of GNFO is restrictive enough so that computational problems such as validity and satisfiability are still decidable. This suggests that, in spite of its expressive power, GNFO formulas are amenable to novel optimizations. In this paper we study the model theory of GNFO formulas. Our results include…
An efficient entailment proof system is essential to compositional verification using separation logic. Unfortunately, existing decision procedures are either inexpressive or inefficient. For example, Smallfoot is an efficient procedure but only works with hardwired lists and trees. Other procedures that can support general inductive predicates run exponentially in time as their proof search requires back-tracking to deal with a disjunction in the consequent. This paper presents a decision procedure to derive cyclic entailment proofs for general inductive predicates in polynomial time. Our pro…
A proof procedure, in the spirit of the sequent calculus, is proposed to check the validity of entailments between Separation Logic formulas combining inductively defined predicates denoted structures of bounded tree width and theory reasoning. The calculus is sound and complete, in the sense that a sequent is valid iff it admits a (possibly infinite) proof tree. We show that the procedure terminates in the two following cases: (i) When the inductive rules that define the predicates occurring on the left-hand side of the entailment terminate, in which case the proof tree is always finite. (ii)…
Separation logic is successful for software verification in both theory and practice. Decision procedure for symbolic heaps is one of the key issues. This paper proposes a cyclic proof system for symbolic heaps with general form of inductive definitions, and shows its soundness and completeness. The decision procedure for entailments of symbolic heaps with inductive definitions is also given. Decidability for entailments of symbolic heaps with inductive definitions is an important question. Completeness of cyclic proof systems is also an important question. The results of this paper answer bot…
Two results are presented concerning the entailment problem in Separation Logic with inductively defined predicate symbols and theory reasoning. First, we show that the entailment problem is undecidable for rules with bounded tree-width, if theory reasoning is considered. The result holds for a wide class of theories, even with a very low expressive power. For instance it applies to the natural numbers with the successor function, or with the usual order. Second, we show that every entailment problem can be reduced to an entailment problem containing no equality (neither in the formulas nor in…
The symbolic-heap fragment of separation logic has been actively developed and advocated for verifying the memory-safety property of computer programs. At present, one of its biggest challenges is to effectively prove entailments containing inductive heap predicates. These entailments are usually proof obligations generated when verifying programs that manipulate complex data structures like linked lists, trees, or graphs. To assist in proving such entailments, this paper introduces a lemma synthesis framework, which automatically discovers lemmas to serve as eureka steps in the proofs. Mathem…
Inductive logic programming is a type of machine learning in which logic programs are learned from examples. This learning typically occurs relative to some background knowledge provided as a logic program. This dissertation introduces bottom preprocessing, a method for generating initial constraints on the programs an ILP system must consider. Bottom preprocessing applies ideas from inverse entailment to modern ILP systems. Inverse entailment is an influential early ILP approach introduced with Progol. This dissertation also presents $\bot$-Popper, an implementation of bottom preprocessing fo…
We consider a logic used to describe sets of configurations of distributed systems, whose network topologies can be changed at runtime, by reconfiguration programs. The logic uses inductive definitions to describe networks with an unbounded number of components and interactions, written using a multiplicative conjunction, reminiscent of Bunched Implications and Separation Logic. We study the complexity of the satisfiability and entailment problems for the configuration logic under consideration. Additionally, we consider robustness properties, such as tightness (are all interactions entirely c…
We compare the model-theoretic expressiveness of the existential fragment of Separation Logic over unrestricted relational signatures (SLR) -- with only separating conjunction as logical connective and higher-order inductive definitions, traditionally known as the symbolic heap fragment -- with the expressiveness of (Monadic) Second Order Logic ((M)SO). While SLR and MSO are incomparable on structures of unbounded treewidth, it turns out that SLR can be embedded in SO, in general, and that MSO becomes a strict subset of SLR, when the treewidth of the models is bounded by a parameter given as i…
We introduce heap automata, a formalism for automatic reasoning about robustness properties of the symbolic heap fragment of separation logic with user-defined inductive predicates. Robustness properties, such as satisfiability, reachability, and acyclicity, are important for a wide range of reasoning tasks in automated program analysis and verification based on separation logic. Previously, such properties have appeared in many places in the separation logic literature, but have not been studied in a systematic manner. In this paper, we develop an algorithmic framework based on heap automata …
