Separation Logic with inductive definitions is a well-known approach for deductive verification of programs that manipulate dynamic data structures. Deciding verification conditions in this context is usually based on user-provided lemmas relating the inductive definitions. We propose a novel approach for generating these lemmas automatically which is based on simple syntactic criteria and deterministic strategies for applying them. Our approach focuses on iterative programs, although it can be applied to recursive programs as well, and specifications that describe not only the shape of the data structures, but also their content or their size. Empirically, we find that our approach is powerful enough to deal with sophisticated benchmarks, e.g., iterative procedures for searching, inserting, or deleting elements in sorted lists, binary search tress, red-black trees, and AVL trees, in a very efficient way.
The natural proof approach DRYAD @cite_17 @cite_13 can prove automatically the correctness of programs against the specifications given by separation logic formulas with inductive definitions. Nevertheless, the lemmas are still supposed to be provided by the users in DRYAD, while our approach can generate the lemmas automatically. Moreover, DRYAD does not provide an independent solver to decide the entailment of separation logic formulas, which makes difficult to compare the performance of our tool with that of DRYAD. In addition, the inductive definitions used in our paper enable succinct lemmas, far less complex than those used in DRYAD, which include complex constraints on data variables and the magic wand.
@cite_13 @cite_17
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We propose natural proofs for reasoning with programs that manipulate data-structures against specifications that describe the structure of the heap, the data stored within it, and separation and framing of sub-structures. Natural proofs are a subclass of proofs that are amenable to completely automated reasoning, that provide sound but incomplete procedures, and that capture common reasoning tactics in program verification. We develop a dialect of separation logic over heaps, called Dryad, with recursive definitions that avoids explicit quantification. We develop ways to reason with heaplets using classical logic over the theory of sets, and develop natural proofs for reasoning using proof tactics involving disciplined unfoldings and formula abstractions. Natural proofs are encoded into decidable theories of first-order logic so as to be discharged using SMT solvers. We also implement the technique and show that a large class of more than 100 correct programs that manipulate data-structures are amenable to full functional correctness using the proposed natural proof method. These programs are drawn from a variety of sources including standard data-structures, the Schorr-Waite algorithm for garbage collection, a large number of low-level C routines from the Glib library and OpenBSD library, the Linux kernel, and routines from a secure verified OS-browser project. Our work is the first that we know of that can handle such a wide range of full functional verification properties of heaps automatically, given pre post and loop invariant annotations. We believe that this work paves the way for deductive verification technology to be used by programmers who do not (and need not) understand the internals of the underlying logic solvers, significantly increasing their applicability in building reliable systems. The natural proof technique for heap verification developed by [32] provides a platform for powerful sound reasoning for specifications written in a dialect of separation logic called Dryad. Natural proofs are proof tactics that enable automated reasoning exploiting recursion, mimicking common patterns found in human proofs. However, these proofs are known to work only for a simple toy language [32]. In this work, we develop a framework called VCDryad that extends the Vcc framework [9] to provide an automated deductive framework against separation logic specifications for C programs based on natural proofs. We develop several new techniques to build this framework, including (a) a novel tool architecture that allows encoding natural proofs at a higher level in order to use the existing Vcc framework (including its intricate memory model, the underlying type-checker, and the SMT-based verification infrastructure), and (b) a synthesis of ghost-code annotations that captures natural proof tactics, in essence forcing Vcc to find natural proofs using primarily decidable theories. We evaluate our tool extensively, on more than 150 programs, ranging from code manipulating standard data structures, well-known open source library routines (Glib, OpenBSD), Linux kernel routines, customized OS data structures, etc. We show that all these C programs can be fully automatically verified using natural proofs (given pre post conditions and loop invariants) without any user-provided proof tactics. VCDryad is perhaps the first deductive verification framework for heap-manipulating programs in a real language that can prove such a wide variety of programs automatically. In this paper, we present a new approach to automatically verify multi-threaded programs which are executed by an unbounded number of threads running in parallel. The starting point for our work is the problem of how we can leverage existing automated verification technology for sequential programs (abstract interpretation, Craig interpolation, constraint solving, etc.) for multi-threaded programs. Suppose that we are given a correctness proof for a trace of a program (or for some other program fragment). We observe that the proof can always be decomposed into a finite set of Hoare triples, and we ask what can be proved from the finite set of Hoare triples using only simple combinatorial inference rules (without access to a theorem prover and without the possibility to infer genuinely new Hoare triples)? We introduce a proof system where one proves the correctness of a multi-threaded program by showing that for each trace of the program, there exists a correctness proof in the space of proofs that are derivable from a finite set of axioms using simple combinatorial inference rules. This proof system is complete with respect to the classical proof method of establishing an inductive invariant (which uses thread quantification and control predicates). Moreover, it is possible to algorithmically check whether a given set of axioms is sufficient to prove the correctness of a multi-threaded program, using ideas from well-structured transition systems. We consider the problem of automated reasoning about dynamically manipulated data structures. The state-of-the-art methods are limited to the unfold-and-match (U+M) paradigm, where predicates are transformed via (un)folding operations induced from their definitions before being treated as uninterpreted. However, proof obligations from verifying programs with iterative loops and multiple function calls often do not succumb to this paradigm. Our contribution is a proof method which -- beyond U+M -- performs automatic formula re-writing by treating previously encountered obligations in each proof path as possible induction hypotheses. This enables us, for the first time, to systematically reason about a wide range of obligations, arising from practical program verification. We demonstrate the power of our proof rules on commonly used lemmas, thereby close the remaining gaps in existing state-of-the-art systems. Another impact, probably more important, is that our method regains the power of compositional reasoning, and shows that the usage of user-provided lemmas is no longer needed for the existing set of benchmarks. This not only removes the burden of coming up with the appropriate lemmas, but also significantly boosts up the verification process, since lemma applications, coupled with unfolding, often induce very large search space.