Computing preconditions and postconditions of while loops

Authors:
Olfa Mraihi;Wided Ghardallou;Asma Louhichi;Lamia Labed Jilani;Khaled Bsaies;Ali Mili
Affiliations:
Institut Superieur de Gestion, Tunis, Tunisia;Faculte des Sciences de Tunis, El Manar, Tunisia;Faculte des Sciences de Tunis, El Manar, Tunisia;Institut Superieur de Gestion, Tunis, Tunisia;Faculte des Sciences de Tunis, El Manar, Tunisia;NJIT, Newark NJ
Venue:
ICTAC'11 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Theoretical aspects of computing
Year:
2011

Citing 19
Cited 2

Programming from specifications (2nd ed.)

Programming from specifications (2nd ed.)
Proof-carrying code

Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
Avoiding exponential explosion: generating compact verification conditions

POPL '01 Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
Guarded commands, nondeterminacy and formal derivation of programs

Communications of the ACM
An axiomatic basis for computer programming

Communications of the ACM
Predicate abstraction for software verification

POPL '02 Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
The Science of Programming

The Science of Programming
Introduction to Mathematical Theory of Computation

Introduction to Mathematical Theory of Computation
A Discipline of Programming

A Discipline of Programming
A Weakest Precondition Semantics for Refinement of Object-Oriented Programs

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Strongest postcondition semantics as the formal basis for reverse engineering

WCRE '95 Proceedings of the Second Working Conference on Reverse Engineering
Towards Reliable Modular Programs

Towards Reliable Modular Programs
Weakest-precondition of unstructured programs

PASTE '05 Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT workshop on Program analysis for software tools and engineering
Creating Vulnerability Signatures Using Weakest Preconditions

CSF '07 Proceedings of the 20th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium
Bouncer: securing software by blocking bad input

Proceedings of twenty-first ACM SIGOPS symposium on Operating systems principles
Program analysis as constraint solving

Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming language design and implementation
Strongest postcondition of unstructured programs

Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs
Mathematics for reasoning about loop functions

Science of Computer Programming
Efficient weakest preconditions

Information Processing Letters

Using invariant relations in the termination analysis of while loops

Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering
Invariant functions and invariant relations: An alternative to invariant assertions

Journal of Symbolic Computation

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Weakest preconditions were introduced by Dijkstra as a tool to define the semantics of programming constructs, and thereby as a means to prove the correctness of programs; the dual concept of strongest postcondition was introduced subsequently as an alternative means for the same ends. In this paper, we present and discuss a method to compute weakest preconditions and strongest postconditions of while loops in a C-like programming language; to this effect, we use the concept of invariant relation. Whereas the task of computing weakest preconditions and strongest postconditions of while loops is usually approached by limiting the number of iterations and applying successive sequential compositions, invariant relations afford us a crisper, closed form solution.