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From the Archives of the Formal Methods and Tools Lab

Axiomatising and Contextualising ACTL

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Models, Languages, and Tools for Concurrent and Distributed Programming

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11665))

Abstract

We present a sound and complete axiomatisation of ACTL, an action-based version of the well-known branching-time temporal logic CTL, and place it into a historical context. ACTL was originally introduced by Rocco De Nicola together with Frits Vaandrager 30 years ago, and it has played a major role in shaping the activity of our Formal Methods and Tools Lab from the nineties to this very day.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A preliminary version of the axiom system was presented in [40]; here we provide a more succinct set of axioms, based on the fact that the eventually and always operators F and G can be expressed in terms of the Until operator U, cf. Sect. 3.

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Acknowledgements

Stefania wishes to thank Salvatore Larosa, who worked on the ACTL axiomatisation; Alessandro Fantechi, Franco Mazzanti, and Monica Nesi, for interesting discussions on the preliminary version of the ACTL axiomatisation; and Maurizio La Bella, who developed the ACTL proof assistant. And, last but not least, Stefania would like to thank Rocco, for having initiated this line of research that has led to so many interesting papers, projects, and collaborations with many different people, and which in hindsight has made it worthwhile to remain at the CNR.

Maurice also would like to thank Alessandro and Franco, for numerous pleasant collaborations on, among others, ACTL-like logics and the KandISTI family. And, of course, also Rocco, for quality time spent together during a number of projects, not limited to research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Formal Methods and Tools Lab, ISTI–CNR, Pisa, Italy

    Stefania Gnesi & Maurice H. ter Beek

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  1. Stefania Gnesi
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Correspondence to Stefania Gnesi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Michele Boreale

  2. School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy

    Flavio Corradini

  3. School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy

    Michele Loreti

  4. Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Rosario Pugliese

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Gnesi, S., ter Beek, M.H. (2019). From the Archives of the Formal Methods and Tools Lab. In: Boreale, M., Corradini, F., Loreti, M., Pugliese, R. (eds) Models, Languages, and Tools for Concurrent and Distributed Programming. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11665. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21485-2_13

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