Program Logics for Homogeneous Generative Run-Time Meta-Programming

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel program logic tailored for homogeneous generative run-time meta-programming, enabling formal reasoning about meta-programs with proven completeness and observational property capture.

Contribution

It presents the first logic for this meta-programming paradigm, demonstrating its applicability, relative completeness, and ability to derive characteristic formulae.

Findings

Logic applies to example meta-programs from literature

Logic is relatively complete and captures observational properties

Enables inductive derivation of characteristic formulae

Abstract

This paper provides the first program logic for homogeneous generative run-time meta-programming---using a variant of MiniML by Davies and Pfenning as its underlying meta-programming language. We show the applicability of our approach by reasoning about example meta-programs from the literature. We also demonstrate that our logics are relatively complete in the sense of Cook, enable the inductive derivation of characteristic formulae, and exactly capture the observational properties induced by the operational semantics.