Narciso Martí-Oliet

Maude: specification and programming in rewriting logic

Maude is a high-level language and a high-performance system supporting executable specification and declarative programming in rewriting logic. Since rewriting logic contains equational logic, Maude also supports equational specification and programming in its sublanguage of functional modules and theories. The underlying equational logic chosen for Maude is membership equational logic, that has sorts, subsorts, operator overloading, and partiality definable by membership and equality conditions. Rewriting logic is reflective, in the sense of being able to express its own metalevel at the object level. Reflection is systematically exploited in Maude endowing the language with powerful metaprogramming capabilities, including both user-definable module operations and declarative strategies to guide the deduction process. This paper explains and illustrates with examples the main concepts of Maudes language design, including its underlying logic, functional, system and object-oriented modules, as well as parameterized modules, theories, and views. We also explain how Maude supports reflection, metaprogramming and internal strategies. The paper outlines the principles underlying the Maude system implementation, including its semicompilation techniques. We conclude with some remarks about applications, work on a formal environment for Maude, and a mobile language extension of Maude.

Rewriting Logic as a Logical and Semantic Framework

The relationships between logic and computation, and the mutual interactions between both fields, are becoming stronger and more pervasive than they have ever been. In fact, our way of thinking about both logic and computation is being altered quite strongly. For example, there is such an increasingly strong connection—in some cases to the point of complete identification—between computation and deduction, and such impressive progress in compilation techniques and computing power, that the frontiers between logical systems, theorem provers, and declarative programming languages are shifting and becoming more and more tenuous, with each area influencing and being influenced by the others.

The maude 2.0 system

This paper gives an overviewof the Maude 2.0 system. We emphasize the full generality with which rewriting logic and membership equational logic are supported, operational semantics issues, the new built-in modules, the more general Full Maude module algebra, the new META-LEVEL module, the LTL model checker, and new implementation techniques yielding substantial performance improvements in rewriting modulo. We also comment on Maudes formal tool environment and on applications.

Rewriting logic

The theory and applications of rewriting logic have been vigorously developed by researchers all over the world during the past eleven years The attached bibliography includes more than three hundred papers related to rewriting logic that have been published so far Three international workshops on rewrit ing logic have been held in the United States France and Japan and a fourth will be held in Italy in Furthermore as explained later in this roadmap several language implementations and a variety of formal tools have also been developed and have been used in a wide range of applications

From Petri Nets to Linear Logic

Linear logic has been recently introduced by Girard as a logic of actions that seems well suited for concurrent computation. In this paper, we establish a systematic correspondence between Petri nets, linear logic theories, and linear categories. Such a correspondence sheds new light on the relationships between linear logic and concurrency, and on how both areas are related to category theory. Categories are here viewed as concurrent systems whose objects are states, and whose morphisms are transitions. This is an instance of the Lambek-Lawvere correspondence between logic and category theory that cannot be expressed within the more restricted framework of the Curry-Howard correspondence.

The Maude System

Maude is a high-performance language and system supporting both equational and rewriting logic computation for a wide range of applications, including development of theorem proving tools, language prototyping, executable specification and analysis of concurrent and distributed systems, and logical framework applications in which other logics are represented, translated, and executed. Maude’s functional modules are theories in membership equational logic [8,1], a Horn logic whose atomic sentences are either equalities t = t′ or membership assertions of the form t : s, stating that a term t has a certain sort s. Such a logic extends OBJ3’s [4] order-sorted equational logic and supports sorts, subsorts, subsort polymorphic overloading of operators, and definition of partial functions with equationally defined domains. Maude’s functional modules are assumed to be Church-Rosser; they are executed by the Maude engine according to the rewriting techniques and operational semantics developed in [1]. Membership equational logic is a sublogic of rewriting logic [6]. A rewrite theory is a pair (T, R) with T a membership equational theory, and R a collection of labeled and possibly conditional rewrite rules involving terms in the signature of T . Maude’s system modules are rewrite theories in exactly this sense. The rewrite rules r : t −→ t′ in R are not equations. Computationally, they are interpreted as local transition rules in a possibly concurrent system. Logically, they are interpreted as inference rules in a logical system. This makes rewriting logic both a general semantic framework to specify concurrent systems and languages [7], and a general logical framework to represent and execute different logics [5]. Rewriting in (T, R) happens modulo the equational axioms in T . Maude supports rewriting modulo different combinations of associativity, commutativity, identity, and idempotency axioms. The rules in R need not be Church-Rosser and need not be terminating. Many different rewriting paths are then possible; therefore, the choice of appropriate strategies is crucial for executing rewrite theories. In Maude, such strategies are not an extra-logical part of the language.

Equational abstractions

Abstraction reduces the problem of whether an infinite state system satisfies a temporal logic property to model checking that property on a finite state abstract version. The most common abstractions are quotients of the original system. We present a simple method of defining quotient abstractions by means of equations collapsing the set of states. Our method yields the minimal quotient system together with a set of proof obligations that guarantee its executability and can be discharged with tools such as those in the Maude formal environment.

Implementing CCS in Maude 2

Abstract This paper describes in detail how to bridge the gap between theory and practice in a new implementation of the CCS operational semantics in Maude, where transitions become rewrites and inference rules become conditional rewrite rules with rewrites in the conditions, as made possible by the new features in Maude 2.0. We implement both the usual transition semantics and the weak transition semantics where internal actions are not observed, and on top of them we also implement the Hennessy-Milner modal logic for describing processes. We compare this implementation with a previous one where transitions become judgements and inference rules become rewrites, and also comment on extensions to the LOTOS language.

Towards a Strategy Language for Maude

We describe a first proposal for a strategy language for Maude, to control the rewriting process and to be used at the object level instead of at the metalevel. We also describe a prototype implementation built over Full Maude using the metalevel and the metalanguage facilities provided by Maude. Finally, we include a series of examples that illustrate the main features of the proposed language.

Executable Structural Operational Semantics in Maude

Abstract This paper describes in detail how to bridge the gap between theory and practice when implementing in Maude structural operational semantics described in rewriting logic, where transitions become rewrites and inference rules become conditional rewrite rules with rewrites in the conditions, as made possible by the new features in Maude 2. We validate this technique using it in several case studies: a functional language Fpl (evaluation and computation semantics), an imperative language WhileL (evaluation and computation semantics), Kahn’s functional language Mini-ML (evaluation or natural semantics), Milner’s CCS (with strong and weak transitions), and Full LOTOS (including ACT ONE data type specifications). In addition, on top of CCS we develop an implementation of the Hennessy–Milner modal logic for describing local capabilities of processes, and for LOTOS we build an entire tool where Full LOTOS specifications can be entered and executed (without user knowledge of the underlying implementation of the semantics). We also compare this method based on transitions as rewrites with another one based on transitions as judgements.