Declarative view of imperative programs

• Authors: Hugh Gibbons
• Venue: IW-FM'98 Proceedings of the 2nd Irish conference on Formal Methods
• Year: 1998

By giving a declarative meaning to an imperative program, the verification of the imperative program is switched from the imperative paradigm to the declarative or logic paradigm where one can take advantage of, for example, referential transparency. Rather than 'compiling' an imperative program to a 'lower level' we 'inverse compile' the imperative program to the 'higher' declarative level. The declarative view of an imperative program is a predicate associated with the imperative program such that if this predicate satisfies the specification of the program then the imperative program is correct relative to the specification. In one sense the associated predicate gives a declarative meaning to the imperative program.