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A Sound Strategy to Compile General Recursion into Finite Depth Pattern Matching

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Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications (SBMF 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13768))

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Abstract

Programming languages are popular and diverse, and the convenience of programmatically changing the behavior of complex systems is attractive even for the ones with stringent security requirements, which often impose restrictions on the acceptable programs. A very common restriction is that the program must terminate, which is very hard to check because the Halting Problem is undecidable. In this work, we proposed a technique to unroll recursive programs in functional languages to create terminating versions of them. We prove that our strategy itself is guaranteed to terminate. We also formalize term generation and run property-based tests to build confidence that the semantics is preserved through the transformation. Our strategy can be used to compile general purpose functional languages to restrictive targets such as the eBPF and smart contracts for blockchain networks.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Version 5.3 and higher has support for bounded loops only.

  2. 2.

    The term “fuel” is inspired by Petrol Semantics. It is presented, for instance, in [16].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil

    Maycon J. J. Amaro & Rodrigo G. Ribeiro

  2. Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, Chapecó, SC, Brazil

    Samuel S. Feitosa

Authors
  1. Maycon J. J. Amaro
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  2. Samuel S. Feitosa
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  3. Rodrigo G. Ribeiro
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maycon J. J. Amaro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

    Lucas Lima

  2. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Vince Molnár

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Amaro, M.J.J., Feitosa, S.S., Ribeiro, R.G. (2022). A Sound Strategy to Compile General Recursion into Finite Depth Pattern Matching. In: Lima, L., Molnár, V. (eds) Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications. SBMF 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13768. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22476-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22476-8_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-22475-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-22476-8

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