Symbolic Reachability Analysis of Higher-Order Context-Free Processes

Ahmed Bouajjani (1) , Antoine Meyer (1)

1 LIAFA - Laboratoire d'informatique Algorithmique : Fondements et Applications

We consider the problem of symbolic reachability analysis of higher-order context-free processes. These models are generalizations of the context-free processes (also called BPA processes) where each process manipulates a data structure which can be seen as a nested stack of stacks. Our main result is that, for any higher-order context-free process, the set of all predecessors of a given regular set of configurations is regular and effectively constructible. This result generalizes the analogous result which is known for level 1 context-free processes. We show that this result holds also in the case of backward reachability analysis under a regular constraint on configurations. As a corollary, we obtain a symbolic model checking algorithm for the temporal logic E(U,X) with regular atomic predicates, i.e., the fragment of CTL restricted to the EU and EX modalities.

Domaines: Logique en informatique [cs.LO]

Ahmed Bouajjani, Antoine Meyer. Symbolic Reachability Analysis of Higher-Order Context-Free Processes. Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS), Nov 2004, Chennai, India. pp.135-147, ⟨10.1007/b104325⟩. ⟨hal-00149812⟩