This course is a prerequisite for Specification and Verification II.
Aims
The aim of the course is to motivate and illustrate the use of
rigorous methods and mechanised tools for reasoning about the
functional behaviour of imperative programs. A goal is to show the
similarities and differences between hardware and software
verification.
Lectures
Program specification.
Partial and total correctness. Hoare notation. [2 lectures]
Program verification.
Axioms and rules of Floyd-Hoare logic. Discussion of soundness and
completeness. [4 lectures]
Mechanised program verification.
Annotation. Verification condition generation. [3 lectures]
Program refinement.
Definition of the refinement relation. Derivation of laws. [1 lecture]
Semantic embedding.
Deep versus shallow embedding. Shallow embedding of Hoare
notation in higher order logic. Programming logic as a special case of
general logic. [2 lectures]
Objectives
By the end of the course students should have an understanding of some
aspects of the following topics. Partial and total correctness. Hoare
notation. Axioms and rules of Floyd-Hoare logic. Soundness and
completeness. Mechanised program verification using verification
conditions. Program refinement. Semantic embedding in higher order
logic. Limitations of program verification.