Proving Termination of Tree Manipulating Programs

Abstract. We consider the termination problem of programs manipulating treelike dynamic data structures. Our approach is based on a counter-example guided ion refinement loop. We use abstract regular tree model-checking to infer invariants of the program. Then, we translate the program to a counter automaton (CA) which simulates it. If the CA can be shown to terminate using existing techniques, the program terminates. If not, we analyse the possible counterexample given by a CA termination checker and either conclude that the program does not e, or else refine the abstraction and repeat. We show that the spuriousness problem for lasso-shaped counterexamples is decidable in some non-trivial cases. We applied the method successfully on several interesting case studies.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ATVA
• Authors: Peter Habermehl, Radu Iosif, Adam Rogalewicz, Tomás Vojnar
• Keywords: Abstract Regular Tree, ATVA 2007, CA Termination Checker, Ion Refinement Loop