Nested Hoare Triples and Frame Rules for Higher-Order Store

Separation logic is a Hoare-style logic for reasoning about programs with heap-allocated mutable data structures. As a step toward extending separation logic to high-level languages with ML-style general (higher-order) storage, we investigate the compatibility of nested Hoare triples with several variations of higher-order frame rules. The interaction of nested triples and frame rules can be subtle, and the inclusion of certain frame rules is in fact unsound. A particular combination of rules can be shown consistent by means of a Kripke model where worlds live in a recursively defined ultrametric space. The resulting logic allows us to elegantly prove programs involving stored code. In particular, it leads to natural specifications and proofs of invariants required for dealing with recursion through the store. Keywords. Higher-order store, Hoare logic, separation logic, semantics.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CSL
• Authors: Jan Schwinghammer, Lars Birkedal, Bernhard Reus, Hongseok Yang
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, CSL 2009, Frame Rules, Nested Hoare Triples, Separation Logic