Automated Theorem Proving using the TPTP Process Instruction Language

of a thesis at the University of Miami. Thesis supervised by Professor Geoff Sutcliffe. No. of pages in text. (53) The TPTP (Thousands of Problems for Theorem Provers) World is a well established infrastructure for Automated Theorem Proving (ATP). In the context of the TPTP World, a command language was needed to make possible the easy manipulation of logical formulae and provide better control over the use of ATP systems. The TPTP Process Instruction (TPI) language provides such capabilities. It is used to input, output and organize logical formulae, and control the execution of ATP systems. This thesis presents the work done for building and testing a shell interpreter for the TPI language. The thesis is divided into five parts. The first part provides a review of ATP, ATP systems, and the TPTP World. The second part provides an overview of the related work and presents the TPI language. The third part introduces the ATP process and discusses its benefits. The fourth part presents the shell interpreter that has been developed for the TPI language, describes its implementation and provides examples of how it can be used in theorem proving. The last part discusses generic control of ATP systems and demonstrates how such control is achieved through an extension to the TPI language.