Abstract Framework for All-Path Reachability Analysis toward Safety and Liveness Verification (Full Version)

TL;DR

This paper extends all-path reachability analysis to verify both safety and liveness properties in systems, introducing a new concept of total validity and a cyclic-proof condition for comprehensive system verification.

Contribution

It reformulates the APR framework for ARSs and LCTRSs, enabling verification of liveness properties and establishing conditions for total validity using cyclic-proof trees.

Findings

Reformulated APR framework for safety and liveness verification.

Introduced the concept of total validity for infinite execution paths.

Provided a necessary and sufficient condition for total validity via cyclic-proof trees.

Abstract

An all-path reachability (APR) predicate over an object set is a pair of a source set and a target set, which are subsets of the object set. APR predicates have been defined for abstract reduction systems (ARSs) and then extended to logically constrained term rewrite systems (LCTRSs) as pairs of constrained terms that represent sets of terms modeling configurations, states, etc. An APR predicate is said to be partially (or demonically) valid w.r.t. a rewrite system if every finite maximal reduction sequence of the system starting from any element in the source set includes an element in the target set. Partial validity of APR predicates w.r.t. ARSs is defined by means of two inference rules, which can be considered a proof system to construct (possibly infinite) derivation trees for partial validity. On the other hand, a proof system for LCTRSs consists of four inference rules, leaving a gap between the inference rules for ARSs and LCTRSs. In this paper, we revisit the framework for APR analysis and adapt it to verification of not only safety but also liveness properties. To this end, we first reformulate an abstract framework for partial validity w.r.t. ARSs so that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the inference rules for partial validity w.r.t. ARSs and LCTRSs. Secondly, we show how to apply APR analysis to safety verification. Thirdly, to apply APR analysis to liveness verification, we introduce a novel stronger validity of APR predicates, called total validity, which requires not only finite but also infinite execution paths to reach target sets. Finally, for a partially valid APR predicate with a cyclic-proof tree, we show a necessary and sufficient condition for the tree to ensure total validity. The condition implies that if there exists a cyclic-proof tree for an APR predicate, the proof graph of which is acyclic, then the APR predicate is totally valid.