René Thiemann

Mechanizing and Improving Dependency Pairs

The dependency pair technique is a powerful method for automated termination and innermost termination proofs of term rewrite systems (TRSs). For any TRS, it generates inequality constraints that have to be satisfied by well-founded orders. We improve the dependency pair technique by considerably reducing the number of constraints produced for (innermost) termination proofs. Moreover, we extend transformation techniques to manipulate dependency pairs that simplify (innermost) termination proofs significantly. To fully mechanize the approach, we show how transformations and the search for suitable orders can be mechanized efficiently. We implemented our results in the automated termination prover AProVE and evaluated them on large collections of examples.

AProVE 1.2: automatic termination proofs in the dependency pair framework

AProVE 1.2 is one of the most powerful systems for automated termination proofs of term rewrite systems (TRSs). It is the first tool which automates the new dependency pair framework [8] and therefore permits a completely flexible combination of different termination proof techniques. Due to this framework, AProVE 1.2 is also the first termination prover which can be fully configured by the user.

Automated Termination Proofs with AProVE

We describe the system ProVE, an automated prover to verify (innermost) termination of term rewrite systems (TRSs). For this system, we have developed and implemented efficient algorithms based on classical simplification orders, dependency pairs, and the size-change principle. In particular, it contains many new improvements of the dependency pair approach that make automated termination proving more powerful and efficient. In ProVE, termination proofs can be performed with a user-friendly graphical interface and the system is currently among the most powerful termination provers available.

The Dependency Pair Framework: Combining Techniques for Automated Termination Proofs

The dependency pair approach is one of the most powerful techniques for automated termination proofs of term rewrite systems. Up to now, it was regarded as one of several possible methods to prove termination. In this paper, we show that dependency pairs can instead be used as a general concept to integrate arbitrary techniques for termination analysis. In this way, the benefits of different techniques can be combined and their modularity and power are increased significantly. We[2] refer to this new concept as the “dependency pair framework” to distinguish it from the old “dependency pair approach”. Moreover, this framework facilitates the development of new methods for termination analysis. To demonstrate this, we present several new techniques within the dependency pair framework which simplify termination problems considerably. We implemented the dependency pair framework in our termination prover AProVE and evaluated it on large collections of examples.

Proving and disproving termination of higher-order functions

The dependency pair technique is a powerful modular method for automated termination proofs of term rewrite systems (TRSs). We present two important extensions of this technique: First, we show how to prove termination of higher-order functions using dependency pairs. To this end, the dependency pair technique is extended to handle (untyped) applicative TRSs. Second, we introduce a method to prove non-termination with dependency pairs, while up to now dependency pairs were only used to verify termination. Our results lead to a framework for combining termination and non-termination techniques for first- and higher-order functions in a very flexible way. We implemented and evaluated our results in the automated termination prover AProVE.

SAT solving for termination analysis with polynomial interpretations

Polynomial interpretations are one of the most popular techniques for automated termination analysis and the search for such interpretations is a main bottleneck in most termination provers. We show that one can obtain speedups in orders of magnitude by encoding this task as a SAT problem and by applying modern SAT solvers.

Certification of Termination Proofs Using CeTA

There are many automatic tools to prove termination of term rewrite systems, nowadays. Most of these tools use a combination of many complex termination criteria. Hence generated proofs may be of tremendous size, which makes it very tedious (if not impossible) for humans to check those proofs for correctness. In this paper we use the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL to automatically certify termination proofs. To this end, we first formalized the required theory of term rewriting including three major termination criteria: dependency pairs, dependency graphs, and reduction pairs. Second, for each of these techniques we developed an executable check which guarantees the correct application of that technique as it occurs in the generated proofs. Moreover, if a proof is not accepted, a readable error message is displayed. Finally, we used Isabelles code generation facilities to generate a highly efficient and certified Haskell program, CeTA, which can be used to certify termination proofs without even having Isabelle installed.

Automated termination analysis for Haskell: from term rewriting to programming languages

There are many powerful techniques for automated termination analysis of term rewriting. However, up to now they have hardly been used for real programming languages. We present a new approach which permits the application of existing techniques from term rewriting in order to prove termination of programs in the functional language Haskell. In particular, we show how termination techniques for ordinary rewriting can be used to handle those features of Haskell which are missing in term rewriting (e.g., lazy evaluation, polymorphic types, and higher-order functions). We implemented our results in the termination prover AProVE and successfully evaluated them on existing Haskell-libraries.

Automated termination proofs for haskell by term rewriting

There are many powerful techniques for automated termination analysis of term rewriting. However, up to now they have hardly been used for real programming languages. We present a new approach which permits the application of existing techniques from term rewriting to prove termination of most functions defined in Haskell programs. In particular, we show how termination techniques for ordinary rewriting can be used to handle those features of Haskell which are missing in term rewriting (e.g., lazy evaluation, polymorphic types, and higher-order functions). We implemented our results in the termination prover AProVE and successfully evaluated them on existing Haskell libraries.

Proving Termination of Programs Automatically with AProVE

AProVE is a system for automatic termination and complexity proofs of Java, C, Haskell, Prolog, and term rewrite systems (TRSs). To analyze programs in high-level languages, AProVE automatically converts them to TRSs. Then, a wide range of techniques is employed to prove termination and to infer complexity bounds for the resulting TRSs. The generated proofs can be exported to check their correctness using automatic certifiers. For use in software construction, we present an AProVE plug-in for the popular Eclipse software development environment.