Verifying programs which operate on data structures
Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
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The major method for verifying the correctness of computer program is the inductive assertion approach. This approach has been limited in the past by the lack of techniques for handling data structures. In particular, there has been a need for concepts with which to describe structured data during intermediate and final stages of a computation. This thesis describes an approach by which this problem can be handled, and demonstrates its use in proving several programs correct. The key to the approach is the restriction of a data structure to a particular structural class. Primitive concepts are introduced which allow such a class to be concisely defined. Other concepts relate structures form a given class to data abstractions which the structures can be thought to represent. It is shown how to integrate the structural description with the actual proofs of correctness by incorporating results of general applicability into a logical formalism for a given structural class. {PB 231-365/AS}