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Computability and Complexity Results for a Spatial Assertion Language for Data Structures

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FST TCS 2001: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2245))

Abstract

This paper studies a recently developed an approach to reasoning about mutable data structures, which uses an assertion language with spatial conjunction and implication connectives. We investigate computability and complexity properties of a subset of the language, which allows statements about the shape of pointer structures (such as “there is a link from x to y”) to be made, but not statements about the data held in cells (such as “x is a prime number”). We show that validity, even for this restricted language, is not r.e., but that the quantifierfree sublanguage is decidable. We then consider the complexity of model checking and validity for several fragments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen Mary, University of London, UK

    Cristiano Calcagno & Peter W. O’Hearn

  2. DISI, University of Genova, USA

    Cristiano Calcagno

  3. ROPAS, KAIST, Korea

    Hongseok Yang

Authors
  1. Cristiano Calcagno
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  2. Hongseok Yang
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  3. Peter W. O’Hearn
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, 560012, Bangalore, India

    Ramesh Hariharan  & V. Vinay  & 

  2. Chennai Mathematical Institute, 92 G.N. Chetty Road, 600 017, Chennai, India

    Madhavan Mukund

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Calcagno, C., Yang, H., O’Hearn, P.W. (2001). Computability and Complexity Results for a Spatial Assertion Language for Data Structures. In: Hariharan, R., Vinay, V., Mukund, M. (eds) FST TCS 2001: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. FSTTCS 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2245. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45294-X_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45294-X_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43002-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45294-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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