Work

Reasoning about expression evaluation under interference

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Hoare-style inference rules for program constructs permit the copying of expressions and tests from program text into logical contexts. It is known that this requires care even for sequential programs but much more serious issues arise with concurrent programs because of potential interference to the values of variables. The “rely-guarantee” approach tackles the challenge of recording acceptable interference and offers a way to provide safe inference rules for concurrent constructs. This article shows how the algebraic presentation of rely-guarantee ideas can clarify and formalise the conditions for safely re-using expressions and tests from program text in logical contexts for reasoning about concurrent programs; crucially this extends to handling expressions that reference more than one shared variable. A non-trivial example related to the Fischer-Galler forest representation of equivalence relations is treated.

Source: Formal Aspects of Computing

DOI: 10.1145/3801150

Authors: Ian Hayes, Cliff Jones, Larissa Meinicke

Institutions: The University of Queensland, Newcastle University

Language: English

Topic: Logic, programming, and type systems

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,780

Funders: Leverhulme Trust, Australian Research Council, Defence Science and Technology Group