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Automatic Symmetry Detection for Promela

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Abstract

We introduce a specification language, Promela-Lite, which captures the essential features of Promela but which, unlike Promela, has a formally defined semantics. We show how we can detect symmetry in specifications defined in Promela-lite by constructing a directed, coloured bipartite digraph called a static channel diagram, and applying computational group theoretic techniques. We extend our approach to Promela and introduce a tool, SymmExtractor, for automatically detecting symmetries of Promela specifications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach via experimental results for a suite of Promela specifications. Unlike previous approaches our technique is fully automatic, and not restricted to fully symmetric systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Codeplay Software Ltd., 45 York Place, Edinburgh, Scotland

    Alastair F. Donaldson

  2. Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland

    Alice Miller

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  1. Alastair F. Donaldson
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  2. Alice Miller
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Correspondence to Alice Miller.

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Donaldson, A.F., Miller, A. Automatic Symmetry Detection for Promela. J Autom Reasoning 41, 251–293 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-008-9107-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-008-9107-4

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