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VLISP: A verified implementation of Scheme

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LISP and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

The VLISP project showed how to produce a comprehensively verified implementation for a programming language, namely Scheme. This paper introduces two more detailed studies on VLISP [13, 21]. It summarizes the basic techniques that were used repeatedly throughout the effort. It presents scientific conclusions about the applicability of the these techniques as well as engineering conclusions about the crucial choices that allowed the verification to succeed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The MITRE Corporation, 202 Burlington Road, 01730-1420, Bedford, MA

    Joshua D. Guttman & John D. Ramsdell

  2. College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, 161 Cullinane Hall, 02115, Boston, MA

    Mitchell Wand

Authors
  1. Joshua D. Guttman
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  2. John D. Ramsdell
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  3. Mitchell Wand
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Additional information

The work reported here was carried out as part of The MITRE Corporation's Technology Program, under funding from Rome Laboratory, Electronic Systems Command, United States Air Force, through contract F19628-89-C-0001. Preparation of this paper was generously supported by The MITRE Corporation. Mitchell Wand's participation was partly supported by NSF and DARPA under NSF grants CCR-9002253 and CCR-9014603.

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Guttman, J.D., Ramsdell, J.D. & Wand, M. VLISP: A verified implementation of Scheme. Lisp and Symbolic Computation 8, 5–32 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128406

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