15-818A3 Introduction to Separation Logic

15-818A3 Introduction to Separation Logic (6 units) Spring 2009

John C. Reynolds

First Half of Spring Semester 2009

University Units: 6 (minicourse)

Mondays and Wednesdays noon-1:20 pm Wean Hall 4623

Course Description

Separation logic, first developed by O'Hearn and Reynolds, is an extension of Hoare logic originally intended for reasoning about programs that use shared mutable data structures. It is based on the concept of separating conjunction, which permits the concise expression of aliasing constraints.

More generally, the logic provides a "frame rule", which enables local reasoning that is the key to the scalability of proofs. Examples of nontrivial proofs include the Schorr-Waite marking algorithm and the Cheney relocating garbage collector.

Recently, by generalizing the concept of storage access to ownership and permissions, the logic has been extended to encompass information hiding, shared-variable concurrency, and numerical permissions.

We will survey the current development of separation logic, including, as time permits, extensions to unrestricted address arithmetic, dynamically allocated arrays, recursive procedures, shared-variable concurrency, and read-only sharing.

PREREQUISITES: Some knowledge of predicate logic and Hoare logic.

TEXTS: Papers and notes to be distributed in class.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Grading will be based on homework.

For an overview of separation logic, see the first chapter and bibliography of the course notes below.