Local Action and Abstract Separation Logic

  • Authors:
  • Cristiano Calcagno;Peter W. O'Hearn;Hongseok Yang

  • Affiliations:
  • Imperial College, London, UK;Queen Mary, University of London;Queen Mary, University of London

  • Venue:
  • LICS '07 Proceedings of the 22nd Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Separation logic is an extension of Hoare's logic which supports a local way of reasoning about programs that mutate memory. We present a study of the semantic structures lying behind the logic. The core idea is of a local action, a state transformer that mutates the state in a local way. We formulate local actions for a class of models called separation algebras, abstracting from the RAM and other specific concrete models used in work on separation logic. Local actions provide a semantics for a generalized form of (sequential) separation logic. We also show that our conditions on local actions allow a general soundness proof for a separation logic for concurrency, interpreted over arbitrary separation algebras.