research-article

Rely-guarantee references for refinement types over aliased mutable data

Authors:

Colin S. Gordon,

Michael D. Ernst,

Dan GrossmanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 48, Issue 6

Pages 73 - 84

https://doi.org/10.1145/2499370.2462160

Published: 16 June 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Reasoning about side effects and aliasing is the heart of verifying imperative programs. Unrestricted side effects through one reference can invalidate assumptions about an alias. We present a new type system approach to reasoning about safe assumptions in the presence of aliasing and side effects, unifying ideas from reference immutability type systems and rely-guarantee program logics. Our approach, rely-guarantee references, treats multiple references to shared objects similarly to multiple threads in rely-guarantee program logics. We propose statically associating rely and guarantee conditions with individual references to shared objects. Multiple aliases to a given object may coexist only if the guarantee condition of each alias implies the rely condition for all other aliases. We demonstrate that existing reference immutability type systems are special cases of rely-guarantee references.

In addition to allowing precise control over state modification, rely-guarantee references allow types to depend on mutable data while still permitting flexible aliasing. Dependent types whose denotation is stable over the actions of the rely and guarantee conditions for a reference and its data will not be invalidated by any action through any alias. We demonstrate this with refinement (subset) types that may depend on mutable data. As a special case, we derive the first reference immutability type system with dependent types over immutable data.

We show soundness for our approach and describe experience using rely-guarantee references in a dependently-typed monadic DSL in Coq.

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Cited By

Coughlin NSmith G(2022)Compositional noninterference on hardware weak memory modelsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779(102779)Online publication date: Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779
He PWestbrook ECarmer BPhifer CRobert VSmeltzer KŞtefănescu ATomb AWick AYacavone MZdancewic S(2021)A type system for extracting functional specifications from memory-safe imperative programsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34855125:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1145/3485512
Timany ABirkedal LHriţcu CPopescu A(2021)Reasoning about monotonicity in separation logicProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3437992.3439931(91-104)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2021
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Index Terms

Rely-guarantee references for refinement types over aliased mutable data
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Software functional properties
      1. Correctness
2. Theory of computation
  1. Logic
    1. Proof theory
  2. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Program analysis
    2. Program semantics

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 48, Issue 6

PLDI '13

June 2013

515 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2499370

Issue’s Table of Contents

PLDI '13: Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
June 2013
546 pages
ISBN:9781450320146
DOI:10.1145/2491956
General Chair:
Hans-J. Boehm
HP Labs
,
Program Chair:
Cormac Flanagan
University of California, Santa Cruz

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 16 June 2013

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 48, Issue 6

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Coughlin NSmith G(2022)Compositional noninterference on hardware weak memory modelsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779(102779)Online publication date: Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779
He PWestbrook ECarmer BPhifer CRobert VSmeltzer KŞtefănescu ATomb AWick AYacavone MZdancewic S(2021)A type system for extracting functional specifications from memory-safe imperative programsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34855125:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1145/3485512
Timany ABirkedal LHriţcu CPopescu A(2021)Reasoning about monotonicity in separation logicProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3437992.3439931(91-104)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3437992.3439931
Moine ACharguéraud APottier FPopescu AZdancewic S(2022)Specification and verification of a transient stackProceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3497775.3503677(82-99)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2022
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Coughlin NSmith G(2022)Compositional noninterference on hardware weak memory modelsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779217:COnline publication date: 1-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.scico.2022.102779
He PWestbrook ECarmer BPhifer CRobert VSmeltzer KŞtefănescu ATomb AWick AYacavone MZdancewic S(2021)A type system for extracting functional specifications from memory-safe imperative programsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34855125:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485512
Timany ABirkedal LHriţcu CPopescu A(2021)Reasoning about monotonicity in separation logicProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3437992.3439931(91-104)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3437992.3439931
Swamy NRastogi AFromherz AMerigoux DAhman DMartínez G(2020)SteelCore: an extensible concurrent separation logic for effectful dependently typed programsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34090034:ICFP(1-30)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2020
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Nigam RAtapattu SThomas SLi ZBauer TYe YKoti ASampson AZhang ZDonaldson ATorlak E(2020)Predictable accelerator design with time-sensitive affine typesProceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3385412.3385974(393-407)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2020
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Coughlin NSmith G(2020)Rely/Guarantee Reasoning for Noninterference in Non-Blocking Algorithms2020 IEEE 33rd Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF)10.1109/CSF49147.2020.00034(380-394)Online publication date: Jun-2020
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