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Decidability of weak logics with deterministic transitive closure

Published: 14 July 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The deterministic transitive closure operator, added to languages containing even only two variables, allows to express many natural properties of a binary relation, including being a linear order, a tree, a forest or a partial function. This makes it a potentially attractive ingredient of computer science formalisms. In this paper we consider the extension of the two-variable fragment of first-order logic by the deterministic transitive closure of a single binary relation, and prove that the satisfiability and finite satisfiability problems for the obtained logic are decidable and ExpSpace-complete. This contrasts with the undecidability of two-variable logic with the deterministic transitive closures of several binary relations, known before. We also consider the class of universal first-order formulas in prenex form. Its various extensions by deterministic closure operations were earlier considered by other authors, leading to both decidability and undecidability results. We examine this scenario in more details.

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Cited By

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  • (2016)Complexity of Two-Variable Logic on Finite TreesACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL)10.1145/299679617:4(1-38)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2016
  • (2016)Semipositivity in Separation Logic with Two VariablesDependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools, and Applications10.1007/978-3-319-47677-3_12(179-196)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2016
  • (2015)Two-Variable Separation Logic and Its Inner CircleACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/272471116:2(1-36)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2015
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cover image ACM Conferences
CSL-LICS '14: Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the Twenty-Third EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL) and the Twenty-Ninth Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS)
July 2014
764 pages
ISBN:9781450328869
DOI:10.1145/2603088
  • Program Chairs:
  • Thomas Henzinger,
  • Dale Miller
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 14 July 2014

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Author Tags

  1. deterministic transitive closure
  2. satisfiability problem
  3. two-variable logic

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CSL-LICS '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 74 of 212 submissions, 35%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 215 of 622 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2016)Complexity of Two-Variable Logic on Finite TreesACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL)10.1145/299679617:4(1-38)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2016
  • (2016)Semipositivity in Separation Logic with Two VariablesDependable Software Engineering: Theories, Tools, and Applications10.1007/978-3-319-47677-3_12(179-196)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2016
  • (2015)Two-Variable Separation Logic and Its Inner CircleACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/272471116:2(1-36)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2015
  • (2015)Separation logics and modalities: a surveyJournal of Applied Non-Classical Logics10.1080/11663081.2015.101880125:1(50-99)Online publication date: Apr-2015

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