Defining and Reasoning About Recursive Functions: A Practical Tool for the Coq Proof Assistant

Abstract. We present a practical tool for defining and proving properties of recursive functions in the Coq proof assistant. The tool generates from pseudo-code the graph of the intended function as an inductive relation. Then it proves that the relation actually represents a function, which is by construction the function that we are trying to define. Then, we generate induction and inversion principles, and a fixpoint equation for proving other properties of the function. Our tool builds upon stateof-the-art techniques for defining recursive functions, and can also be used to generate executable functions from inductive descriptions of their graph. We illustrate the benefits of our tool on two case studies.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FLOPS
• Authors: Gilles Barthe, Julien Forest, David Pichardie, Vlad Rusu
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, Coq Proof Assistant, FLOPS 2006, Recursive Functions, Tool