Formal program construction by transformations-computer-aided, intuition-guided programming

Bauer, Friedrich L.; Möller, Bernhard; Partsch, Helmuth; Pepper, Peter

doi:10.1109/32.21743

Cited by 124 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The Munich project CIP (Computer-aided Intuitionguided Programming) [21][22][23] uses a wide-spectrum language based on algebraic specifications and an applicative kernel language. However this approach does have some problems with the numbers of axioms required, and the difficulty of determining the exact correctness conditions of transformations.…”

Section: Transformation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See [4,25] for a description of the kernel language. In contrast to other work (for example, [23,26,27]) we do not use a purely applicative kernel; instead, the concept of state is included, using a specification statement which also allows specifications expressed in first order logic as part of the language, thus providing a genuine wide spectrum language.…”

Section: Our Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recursion Removal/Introduction by Formal Transformation: An Aid to Program Development and Program Comprehension

Ward¹,

Bennett²

1999

The Computer Journal

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The transformation of a recursive program to an iterative equivalent is a fundamental operation in Computer Science. In the reverse direction, the task of reverse engineering (analysing a given program in order to determine its specification) can be greatly ameliorated if the program can be re-expressed in a suitable recursive form. But the existing recursion removal transformations, such as the techniques discussed by Knuth [1] and Bird [2], can only be applied in the reverse direction if the source program happens to match the structure produced by a particular recursion removal operation. In this paper we describe a much more powerful recursion removal and introduction operation which describes its source and target in the form of an action system (a collection of labels and calls to labels). A simple, mechanical, restructuring operation can be applied to a great many iterative programs which will put them in a suitable form for recursion introduction. Our transformation generates strictly more iterative versions than the standard methods, including those of Knuth and Bird [1,2]. With the aid of this theorem we prove a (somewhat counterintuitive) result for programs that contain sequences of two or more recursive calls: under a reasonable commutativity condition, "depth-first" execution is more general than "breadth-first" execution. In "depth-first" execution, the execution of each recursive call is completed, including all sub-calls, before execution of the next call is started. In "breadth-first" execution, each recursive call in the sequence is partially executed but any sub-calls are temporarily postponed. This result means that any breadth-first program can be reimplemented as a corresponding depth-first program, but the converse does not hold. We also treat the case of "random-first" execution, where the execution order is implementation dependent. For the more restricted domain of tree searching we show that breadth first search is the most general form. We also give two examples of recursion introduction as an aid to formal reverse engineering.

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Section: Transformation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Our Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recursion Removal/Introduction by Formal Transformation: An Aid to Program Development and Program Comprehension

Ward¹,

Bennett²

1999

The Computer Journal

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“…The individual transformations are done by semantic preserving transformation rules, which guarantees that the final version of the program still satisfies the initial specification. Such an approach has the following advantages [36].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most well-known transformation systems is the computer-aided, intuition-guided programming (CIP) project [36]. Inside CIP, program development is viewed as an evolutionary process that usually starts with a formal problem specification and ends with an executable program for the intended target machine.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

System Modeling and Transformational Design Refinement in ForSyDe

Sander

Jantsch

2004

IEEE Trans. Comput.-Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst.

144

100

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Abstract-The scope of the Formal System Design (ForSyDe) methodology is high-level modeling and refinement of systems-on-a-chip and embedded systems. Starting with a formal specification model, that captures the functionality of the system at a high abstraction level, it provides formal design-transformation methods for a transparent refinement process of the system model into an implementation model that is optimized for synthesis. The main contribution of this paper is the ForSyDe modeling technique and the formal treatment of transformational design refinement. We introduce process constructors, that cleanly separate the computation part of a process from the synchronization and communication part. We develop the characteristic function for each process type and use it to define semantic preserving and design decision transformations. These transformations are characterized by name, the format of the original process network, the transformed process network, and a design implication. The implication expresses the relation between original and transformed process network by means of the characteristic function. The objective of the refinement process is a model that can be implemented cost efficiently. To this end, process constructors and processes have a hardware and software interpretation which shall facilitate accurate performance and cost estimations. In a study of a digital equalizer example, we illustrate the modeling and refinement process and focus in particular on refinement of the clock domain, communication refinement, and resource sharing.Index Terms-Formal methods, hardware/software codesign, modeling, system-on-a-chip (SoC).

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“…Existing transformation systems can be divided into two classes: those that perform transformations automatically and those which are guided by users. The CIP project [CIP84] [BMPP89] focused on correctness-preserving and source-to-source program transformation at different levels of abstraction. The development process is guided by the programmer who has to choose appropriate transformation rules.…”

Section: Program Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Query Optimization and Planning in Object-Oriented Knowledge Bases

Sheu¹

1992

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Formal program construction by transformations-computer-aided, intuition-guided programming

Cited by 124 publications

References 42 publications

Recursion Removal/Introduction by Formal Transformation: An Aid to Program Development and Program Comprehension

Recursion Removal/Introduction by Formal Transformation: An Aid to Program Development and Program Comprehension

System Modeling and Transformational Design Refinement in ForSyDe

Query Optimization and Planning in Object-Oriented Knowledge Bases

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