A Deductive Approach to Program Synthesis

Manna, Zohar; Waldinger, Richard

doi:10.1016/b978-0-934613-03-3.50015-5

Cited by 100 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…by exploiting the relationship between loop variables i and j, the nested loop structure of sumfsum1 can be replaced by a single loop, as shown in sumfsum2. Manna and Waldinger (1980) introduce a deductive approach to recursive program synthesis. Proof planning enables us to use a similar approach, but allows us to identify the various types of knowledge needed for such a task.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Proof Plans with Partial Order Planning for Imperative Program Synthesis

Ireland

Stark

2006

Autom Software Eng

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The structured programming literature provides methods and a wealth of heuristic knowledge for guiding the construction of provably correct imperative programs. We investigate these methods and heuristics as a basis for mechanizing program synthesis. Our approach combines proof planning with conventional partial order planning. Proof planning is an automated theorem proving technique which uses high-level proof plans to guide the search for proofs. Proof plans are structured in terms of proof methods, which encapsulate heuristics for guiding proof search. We demonstrate that proof planning provides a local perspective on the synthesis task. In particular, we show that proof methods can be extended to represent heuristics for guiding program construction. Partial order planning complements proof planning by providing a global perspective on the synthesis task. This means that it allows us to reason about the order in which program fragments are composed. Our hybrid approach has been implemented in a semi-automatic system called BERTHA. BERTHA supports partial correctness and has been tested on a wide range of non-trivial programming examples.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Proof Plans with Partial Order Planning for Imperative Program Synthesis

Ireland

Stark

2006

Autom Software Eng

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“…Planning is a discipline that concentrates on problems adherent to the specification, verification, and synthesis of plans (see Manna and Waldinger, 1980;Rosenschein, 1981;Georgeff, 1987b;Stephan and Biundo, 1993). Plan synthesis concerns the composition ('synthesis') of a plan, usually a compound action term, to achieve some specified goal or goals.…”

Section: Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning about action and change

Prendinger¹,

Schurz

1996

J Logic Lang Inf

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Reasoning about change is a central issue in research on human and robot planning. We study an approach to reasoning about action and change in a dynamic logic setting and provide a solution to problems which are related to the frame problem. Unlike most work on the flame problem the logic described in this paper is monotonic. It (implicitly) allows for the occurrence of actions of multiple agents by introducing non-stationary notions of waiting and test. The need to state a large number of "frame axioms" is alleviated by introducing a concept of chronological preservation to dynamic logic. As a side effect, this concept permits the encoding of temporal properties in a natural way. We compare the relative merits of our approach and non-monotonic approaches as regards different aspects of the frame problem. Technically, we show that the resulting extended systems of propositional dynamic logic preserve (weak) completeness, finite model property and decidability.

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“…However, construction of usable deductive synthesis systems is difficult. In the past thirty years, a great deal of progress has been made in the development of program synthesis systems based on theorem proving, transformations, and logic programming (Jones et al, 1993;Manna and Waldinger, 1980;Rich and Waters, 1988). However, in spite of this progress, these techniques are not in the mainstream of software development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Deductive program synthesis technology has been known since the late 1960's (Green, 1969;Manna and Waldinger, 1980). However, construction of usable deductive synthesis systems is difficult.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Procedure Construction for Deductive Synthesis

Roach

Baalen

2005

Autom Software Eng

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Deductive program synthesis systems based on automated theorem proving offer the promise of software that is correct by construction. However, the difficulty encountered in constructing usable deductive synthesis systems has prevented their widespread use. Amphion is a real-world, domain-independent, completely automated program synthesis system. It is specialized to specific applications through the creation of an operational domain theory and a specialized deductive engine. This paper describes an experiment aimed at making the construction of usable Amphion applications easier.The software system Theory Operationalization for Program Synthesis (TOPS) has a library of decision procedure templates with a theory schema for each procedure. TOPS identifies sets of axioms in the domain theory that are instances of theory schema associated with library procedures. For each procedure instance, TOPS uses iterated partial deduction to augment the procedure with the capability to construct ground terms for deductive synthesis. Synthesized procedures are interfaced to a resolution theorem prover. Axioms in the original domain theory that are implied by the synthesized procedures are removed.The inference rules of the theorem prover have been extended so that during deductive synthesis, each procedure is invoked to test conjunctions of literals in the language of the theory of that procedure. When possible, the procedure generates ground terms and binds them to variables in a problem specification. These terms are program fragments. Experiments show that the procedures synthesized by TOPS can reduce theorem proving search at least as much as hand tuning of the deductive synthesis system.

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A Deductive Approach to Program Synthesis

Cited by 100 publications

References 9 publications

Combining Proof Plans with Partial Order Planning for Imperative Program Synthesis

Combining Proof Plans with Partial Order Planning for Imperative Program Synthesis

Reasoning about action and change

Automated Procedure Construction for Deductive Synthesis

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