Departmental Papers (CIS)
Date of this Version
March 2004
Document Type
Conference Paper
Recommended Citation
Rajeev Alur, Kousha Etessami, and P. Madhusudan, "A Temporal Logic of Nested Calls and Returns ", Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems 2988, 467-481. March 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24730-2_35
Abstract
Model checking of linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications with respect to pushdown systems has been shown to be a useful tool for analysis of programs with potentially recursive procedures. LTL, however, can specify only regular properties, and properties such as correctness of procedures with respect to pre and post conditions, that require matching of calls and returns, are not regular. We introduce a temporal logic of calls and returns (CARET) for specification and algorithmic verification of correctness requirements of structured programs. The formulas of CARET are interpreted over sequences of propositional valuations tagged with special symbols call and ret. Besides the standard global temporal modalities, CARET admits the abstract-next operator that allows a path to jump from a call to the matching return. This operator can be used to specify a variety of non-regular properties such as partial and total correctness of program blocks with respect to pre and post conditions. The abstract versions of the other temporal modalities can be used to specify regular properties of local paths within a procedure that skip over calls to other procedures. CARET also admits the caller modality that jumps to the most recent pending call, and such caller modalities allow specification of a variety of security properties that involve inspection of the call-stack. Even though verifying context-free properties of pushdown systems is undecidable, we show that model checking CARET formulas against a pushdown model is decidable. We present a tableau construction that reduces our model checking problem to the emptiness problem for a Büchi pushdown system. The complexity of model checking CARET formulas is the same as that of checking LTL formulas, namely, polynomial in the model and singly exponential in the size of the specification.
Subject Area
CPS Theory
Publication Source
Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems
Volume
2988
Start Page
467
Last Page
481
DOI
10.1007/978-3-540-24730-2_35
Copyright/Permission Statement
The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
Date Posted: 21 December 2005
Comments
From the 10th International Conference, TACAS 2004, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2004, Barcelona, Spain, March 29 - April 2, 2004.