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A Practical Approach to Partiality – A Proof Based Approach

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5256))

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Abstract

Partial functions are frequently used when specifying and reasoning about computer programs. Using partial functions entails reasoning about potentially ill-defined expressions. In this paper we show how to formally reason about partial functions without abandoning the well understood domain of classical two-valued predicate calculus. In order to achieve this, we extend standard predicate calculus with the notion of well-definedness which is currently used to filter out potentially ill-defined statements from proofs. The main contribution of this paper is to show how the standard predicate calculus can be extended with a new set of derived proof rules that can be used to preserve well-definedness in order to make proofs involving partial functions less tedious to perform.

This research was carried out at the ETH Zurich as part of the EU research project IST 511599 RODIN (Rigorous Open Development Environment for Complex Systems).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systransis AG − Transport Information Systems, Bahnhofplatz, P.O. Box 4714, CH-6304, Zug, Switzerland

    Farhad Mehta

Authors
  1. Farhad Mehta
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Hosei University, 3-7-2 Kajino-cho Koganei-shi, 184-8584, Tokoy, Japan

    Shaoying Liu

  2. Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, 1280 Main St West, L8S 4K1, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Tom Maibaum

  3. Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering, , Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 6-10-1-Hakozaki, 812-8581, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Keijiro Araki

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Mehta, F. (2008). A Practical Approach to Partiality – A Proof Based Approach. In: Liu, S., Maibaum, T., Araki, K. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5256. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-88193-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-88194-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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