HOL Light: An Overview

  • Authors:
  • John Harrison

  • Affiliations:
  • Intel Corporation, JF1-13, Hillsboro 97124

  • Venue:
  • TPHOLs '09 Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

HOL Light is an interactive proof assistant for classical higher-order logic, intended as a clean and simplified version of Mike Gordon's original HOL system. Theorem provers in this family use a version of ML as both the implementation and interaction language; in HOL Light's case this is Objective CAML (OCaml). Thanks to its adherence to the so-called `LCF approach', the system can be extended with new inference rules without compromising soundness. While retaining this reliability and programmability from earlier HOL systems, HOL Light is distinguished by its clean and simple design and extremely small logical kernel. Despite this, it provides powerful proof tools and has been applied to some non-trivial tasks in the formalization of mathematics and industrial formal verification.