NDLI: Blaming the client: on data refinement in the presence of pointers

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Filipović, Ivana O’Hearn, Peter Torp Smith, ah Yang, Hongseok
Copyright Year	2009
Abstract	Data refinement is a common approach to reasoning about programs, based on establishing that a concrete program indeed satisfies all the required properties imposed by an intended abstract pattern. Reasoning about programs in this setting becomes complex when use of pointers is assumed and, moreover, a well-known method for proving data refinement, namely the forward simulation method, becomes unsound in presence of pointers. The reason for unsoundness is the failure of the “lifting theorem” for simulations: that a simulation between abstract and concrete modules can be lifted to all client programs. The result is that simulation does not imply that a concrete can replace an abstract module in all contexts. Our diagnosis of this problem is that unsoundness is due to interference from the client programs. Rather than blame a module for the unsoundness of lifting simulations, our analysis places the blame on the client programs which cause the interference: when interference is not present, soundness is recovered. Technically, we present a novel instrumented semantics which is capable of detecting interference between a module and its client. With use of special simulation relations, namely growing relations, and interpreting the simulation method using the instrumented semantics, we obtain a lifting theorem. We then show situations under which simulation does indeed imply refinement.
Starting Page	547
Ending Page	583
Page Count	37
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09345043
Journal	Formal Aspects of Computing
Volume Number	22
Issue Number	5
e-ISSN	1433299X
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2009-10-02
Publisher Place	London
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Data refinement Separation logic Pointer aliasing Interference Computational Mathematics and Numerical Analysis Theory of Computation Math Applications in Computer Science
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Theoretical Computer Science Software

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