Executing Assertions via Synthesized Logic Programs

Programming with assertions constitutes an effective tool to detect and correct programming errors. The ability of executing formal specifications is essential in order to test automatically an implementation against its assertions. However, formal assertions may describe recursive models which are difficult to identify so current assertion checkers limit, in a considerable way, the expressivity of the assertion language. In this paper, we are interested in showing how transformational synthesis can help to execute “expressive” assertions r of the form ∀x̄(r(x̄) ⇔ QȳR(x̄, ȳ)) where Q is either an existential or universal quantifier and R a quantifier free formula in the language of a formal theory C we call assertion context. This sort of theories is interesting because it presents a balance between expressiveness for writing assertions and existence of effective methods for compiling and executing them.