2021/07/26 by Hari Govind V K, K, Hari Govind V, Sharon Shoham +3
Computer Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Formal Languages and Automata Theory (cs.FL) #Formal Methods in Verification #Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO) #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #Logic, programming, and type systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.12902
openalex publication_date 2021/07/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
An uninterpreted program (UP) is a program whose semantics is defined over the theory of uninterpreted functions. This is a common abstraction used in equivalence checking, compiler optimization, and program verification. While simple, the model is sufficiently powerful to encode counter automata, and, hence, undecidable. Recently, a class of UP programs, called coherent, has been proposed and shown to be decidable. We provide an alternative, logical characterization, of this result. Specifically, we show that every coherent program is bisimilar to a finite state system. Moreover, an inductive invariant of a coherent program is representable by a formula whose terms are of depth at most 1. We also show that the original proof, via automata, only applies to programs over unary uninterpreted functions. While this work is purely theoretical, it suggests a novel abstraction that is complete for coherent programs but can be soundly used on arbitrary uninterpreted (and partially interpreted) programs.