Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Pointer Program Synthesis as Non-deterministic Planning

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language and Method (SOFL+MSVL 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12723))

  • 286 Accesses

Abstract

Program synthesis is the task of automatically constructing programs that satisfy a given high-level formal specification (constraints). In this paper, we concentrate on the synthesis problem of a special category of program, named pointer program that manipulate heaps. Separation logic has been applied successfully in modular reasoning of pointer programs. There are many studies on formal analysis of pointer programs using a form of symbolic execution based on a decidable proof theory of separation logic. Automatic specification checking can be done efficiently by means of symbolic execution. With this basis, we present a novel approach to simulate the symbolic execution process for the sake of synthesizing pointer programs. Concretely, symbolic execution rules are compiled into a non-deterministic planning problem which can be directly solved by existing planners. The reason of using non-deterministic planning is that it enables to generate strong cyclic plans where loop and branch connections (similar to basic program constructs) may appear. We show the preliminary experimental results on synthesizing several programs that work with linked lists.

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61806158, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 2019T120881 and Grant 2018M643585.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.syntcomp.org/.

  2. 2.

    Fluents in \(\mathcal {F} \backslash \mathcal {I}\) are implicitly assumed to be false according to the closed world assumption.

References

  1. Balog, M., Gaunt, A.L., Brockschmidt, M., Nowozin, S., Tarlow, D.: Deepcoder: learning to write programs. In: 5th International Conference on Learning Representations, ICLR 2017, Toulon, France, 24–26 April 2017, Conference Track Proceedings. OpenReview.net (2017). https://openreview.net/forum?id=ByldLrqlx

  2. Beltramelli, T.: pix2code: generating code from a graphical user interface screenshot. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems, EICS 2018, Paris, France, 19–22 June 2018. pp. 3:1–3:6. ACM (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3220134.3220135

  3. Berdine, J., Calcagno, C., O’Hearn, P.W.: A decidable fragment of separation logic. In: FSTTCS 2004: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science, 24th International Conference, Chennai, India, 16–18 December 2004, Proceedings, pp. 97–109 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30538-5_9

  4. Berdine, J., Calcagno, C., O’Hearn, P.W.: Symbolic execution with separation logic. In: Programming Languages and Systems, Third Asian Symposium, APLAS 2005, Tsukuba, Japan, 2–5 November 2005, Proceedings, pp. 52–68 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/11575467_5

  5. Bloem, R., Jobstmann, B., Piterman, N., Pnueli, A., Sa’ar, Y.: Synthesis of reactive(1) designs. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 78(3), 911–938 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2011.08.007

  6. Calcagno, C., et al.: Moving fast with software verification. In: Havelund, K., Holzmann, G.J., Joshi, R. (eds.) NASA Formal Methods - 7th International Symposium, NFM 2015, Pasadena, CA, USA, 27–29 April 2015, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9058, pp. 3–11. Springer (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17524-9_1

  7. Calcagno, C., Distefano, D., O’Hearn, P.W., Yang, H.: Compositional shape analysis by means of bi-abduction. J. ACM 58(6), 26:1–26:66 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1145/2049697.2049700

  8. Camacho, A., Bienvenu, M., McIlraith, S.A.: Towards a unified view of AI planning and reactive synthesis. In: Benton, J., Lipovetzky, N., Onaindia, E., Smith, D.E., Srivastava, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS 2018, Berkeley, CA, USA, 11–15 July 2019, pp. 58–67. AAAI Press (2019). https://aaai.org/ojs/index.php/ICAPS/article/view/3460

  9. Cimatti, A., Pistore, M., Roveri, M., Traverso, P.: Weak, strong, and strong cyclic planning via symbolic model checking. Artif. Intell. 147(1–2), 35–84 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0004-3702(02)00374-0

  10. Distefano, D., O’Hearn, P.W., Yang, H.: A local shape analysis based on separation logic. In: Hermanns, H., Palsberg, J. (eds.) Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 12th International Conference, TACAS 2006 Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2006, Vienna, Austria, March 25 - April 2, 2006, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3920, pp. 287–302. Springer (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11691372_19

  11. Fox, M., Long, D.: PDDL2.1: an extension to PDDL for expressing temporal planning domains. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 20, 61–124 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1613/jair.1129

  12. Fu, J., Bastani, F.B., Yen, I.: Automated AI planning and code pattern based code synthesis. In: 18th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2006), 13–15 November 2006, Arlington, VA, USA, pp. 540–546. IEEE Computer Society (2006). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTAI.2006.37

  13. Ghallab, M., Nau, D.S., Traverso, P.: Automated Planning - Theory and Practice. Elsevier (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Gu, X., Zhang, H., Zhang, D., Kim, S.: Deep API learning. In: Zimmermann, T., Cleland-Huang, J., Su, Z. (eds.) Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, FSE 2016, Seattle, WA, USA, 13–18 November 2016, pp. 631–642. ACM (2016). https://doi.org/10.1145/2950290.2950334

  15. Gulwani, S., Polozov, O., Singh, R.: Program synthesis. Found. Trends Program. Lang. 4(1–2), 1–119 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1561/2500000010

  16. Kitzelmann, E.: Inductive programming: A survey of program synthesis techniques. In: Schmid, U., Kitzelmann, E., Plasmeijer, R. (eds.) Approaches and Applications of Inductive Programming, Third International Workshop, AAIP 2009, Edinburgh, UK, 4 September 2009. Revised Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5812, pp. 50–73. Springer (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11931-6_3

  17. Magill, S., Nanevski, A., Clarke, E., Lee, P.: Inferring invariants in separation logic for imperative list-processing programs. SPACE 1(1), 5–7 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Muise, C.J., McIlraith, S.A., Beck, J.C.: Improved non-deterministic planning by exploiting state relevance. In: McCluskey, L., Williams, B.C., Silva, J.R., Bonet, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS 2012, Atibaia, São Paulo, Brazil, 25–19 June 2012. AAAI (2012). http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICAPS/ICAPS12/paper/view/4718

  19. Reynolds, J.C.: Separation logic: A logic for shared mutable data structures. In: 17th IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2002), 22–25 July 2002, Copenhagen, Denmark, Proceedings, pp. 55–74 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1109/LICS.2002.1029817

  20. Vanneschi, L., Poli, R.: Genetic programming - introduction, applications, theory and open issues. In: Rozenberg, G., Bäck, T., Kok, J.N. (eds.) Handbook of Natural Computing, pp. 709–739. Springer (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9_24

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICTT and ISN Lab, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, People’s Republic of China

    Xu Lu & Bin Yu

Authors
  1. Xu Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Bin Yu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bin Yu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China

    Jinyun Xue

  2. Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan

    Fumiko Nagoya

  3. Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Shaoying Liu

  4. Xidian University, Xi’an, China

    Zhenhua Duan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Lu, X., Yu, B. (2021). Pointer Program Synthesis as Non-deterministic Planning. In: Xue, J., Nagoya, F., Liu, S., Duan, Z. (eds) Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language and Method. SOFL+MSVL 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12723. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77474-5_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77474-5_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-77473-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-77474-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation