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Politeness and Combination Methods for Theories with Bridging Functions

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Abstract

The Nelson–Oppen combination method is ubiquitous in Satisfiability Modulo Theories solvers. However, one of its major drawbacks is to be restricted to disjoint unions of theories. We investigate the problem of extending this combination method to particular non-disjoint unions of theories defined by connecting disjoint theories via bridging functions. A possible application is to solve verification problems expressed in a combination of data structures connected to arithmetic with bridging functions such as the length of lists and the size of trees. We present a sound and complete combination method à la Nelson–Oppen for the theory of absolutely free data structures, including lists and trees. This combination procedure is then refined for standard interpretations. The resulting theory has a nice politeness property, enabling combinations with arbitrary decidable theories of elements. In addition, we have identified a class of polite data structure theories for which the combination method remains sound and complete. This class includes all the subtheories of absolutely free data structures (e.g, the empty theory, injectivity, projection). Again, the politeness property holds for any theory in this class, which can thus be combined with bridging functions and arbitrary decidable theories of elements. This illustrates the significance of politeness in the context of non-disjoint combinations of theories.

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Notes

  1. Trivial equalities \(v=v\) are used to introduce fresh variables denoting elements. Actually, trivial equalities of sort \(\sigma \) can be omitted when \(\varvec{\kappa }(\sigma ) > 1\): in that case, the non-empty conjunction of disequalities \(v \ne v'\) of sort \(\sigma \) is sufficient.

  2. For any constructor-based term t, \([[ {t} ]]\) is the equivalence class of t modulo \(=_{E}\).

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the reviewers of this paper and of the previous related conference papers for their insightful remarks: the paper has been improved significantly thanks to their comments. Pascal Fontaine would also like to thank Jasmin C. Blanchette for discussions, encouragements and financial support through his ERC Grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IIIA-CSIC, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain

    Paula Chocron

  2. INRIA, Université de Lorraine and LORIA, Nancy, France

    Pascal Fontaine

  3. INRIA and LORIA, Nancy, France

    Christophe Ringeissen

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  1. Paula Chocron
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  2. Pascal Fontaine
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  3. Christophe Ringeissen
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Correspondence to Christophe Ringeissen.

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This work has been partially supported by the European Research Council (ERC) starting Grant Matryoshka (713999).

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Chocron, P., Fontaine, P. & Ringeissen, C. Politeness and Combination Methods for Theories with Bridging Functions. J Autom Reasoning 64, 97–134 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-019-09512-4

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