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Working Conference on Verified Software: Theories, Tools, and Experiments

VSTTE 2018: Verified Software. Theories, Tools, and Experiments pp 177–195Cite as

A Formalization of the ABNF Notation and a Verified Parser of ABNF Grammars

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11294))

Abstract

Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) is a standardized formal grammar notation used in several Internet syntax specifications. This paper describes (i) a formalization of the syntax and semantics of the ABNF notation and (ii) a verified parser that turns ABNF grammar text into a formal representation usable in declarative specifications of correct parsing of ABNF-specified languages. This work has been developed in the ACL2 theorem prover.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The meta circularity of the definition of the concrete syntax of ABNF in ABNF is broken by the human in the loop, who defines an abstract syntax of ABNF in ACL2.

  2. 2.

    Future work includes exploring mechanisms to “plug” such external predicates into the ABNF semantics.

  3. 3.

    Future work includes exploring the formulation of an unambiguous ABNF grammar of ABNF that provably defines the same language as the current ambiguous one.

  4. 4.

    Even though the roles of SP and HTAB are “symmetric” in the rule WSP in Fig. 2, the function parse-wsp in Fig. 9 “asymmetrically” tries to parse SP before HTAB.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by DARPA under Contract No. FA8750-15-C-0007.

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  1. Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Alessandro Coglio

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  1. Alessandro Coglio
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Correspondence to Alessandro Coglio .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ruzica Piskac

  2. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Philipp Rümmer

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Coglio, A. (2018). A Formalization of the ABNF Notation and a Verified Parser of ABNF Grammars. In: Piskac, R., Rümmer, P. (eds) Verified Software. Theories, Tools, and Experiments. VSTTE 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11294. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03592-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03592-1_10

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