Undecidable problem

About: Undecidable problem is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3135 publications have been published within this topic receiving 71238 citations.

Linear, Polynomial or Exponential? Complexity Inference in Polynomial Time (Extended Abstract)

Abstract: We present a new method for inferring complexity properties for imperative programs with bounded loops. The properties handled are: polynomial (or linear) boundedness of computed values, as a function of the input; and similarly for the running time. It is well known that complexity properties are undecidable for a Turing-complete programming language. Much work in program analysis overcomes this obstacle by relaxing the correctness notion: one does not ask for an algorithm that correctly decides whether the property of in- terest holds or not, but only for "yes" answers to be sound. In contrast, we reshaped the problem by defining a "core" programming language that is Turing-incomplete, but strong enough to model real programs of interest. For this language, our method is the first to give a certain answer; in other words, our inference is both sound and complete. The essence of the method is that every command is assigned a "com- plexity certificate", which is a concise specification of dependencies of output values on input. These certificates are produced by inference rules that are compositional and efficiently computable. The approach is in- spired by previous work by Niggl and Wunderlich and by Jones and Kristiansen, but use a novel, more expressive kind of certificates.

Really Natural Linear Indexed Type Checking

Abstract: Recent works have shown the power of linear indexed type systems for enforcing complex program properties. These systems combine linear types with a language of type-level indices, allowing more fine-grained analyses. Such systems have been fruitfully applied in diverse domains, including implicit complexity and differential privacy.A natural way to enhance the expressiveness of this approach is by allowing the indices to depend on runtime information, in the spirit of dependent types. This approach is used in DFuzz, a language for differential privacy. The DFuzz type system relies on an index language supporting real and natural number arithmetic over constants and variables. Moreover, DFuzz uses a subtyping mechanism to make types more flexible. By themselves, linearity, dependency, and subtyping each require delicate handling when performing type checking or type inference; their combination increases this challenge substantially, as the features can interact in non-trivial ways.In this paper, we study the type-checking problem for DFuzz. We show how we can reduce type checking for (a simple extension of) DFuzz to constraint solving over a first-order theory of naturals and real numbers which, although undecidable, can often be handled in practice by standard numeric solvers.

Automata vs. logics on data words

Abstract: The relationship between automata and logics has been investigated since the 1960s. In particular, it was shown how to determine, given an automaton, whether or not it is definable in first-order logic with label tests and the order relation, and for first-order logic with the successor relation. In recent years, there has been much interest in languages over an infinite alphabet. Kaminski and Francez introduced a class of automata called finite memory automata (FMA), that represent a natural analog of finite state machines. A FMA can use, in addition to its control state, a (bounded) number of registers to store and compare values from the input word. The class of data languages recognized by FMA is incomparable with the class of data languages defined by firstorder formulas with the order relation and an additional binary relation for data equality. We first compare the expressive power of several variants of FMA with several data word logics. Then we consider the corresponding decision problem: given an automaton A and a logic, can the language recognized by A be defined in the logic? We show that it is undecidable for several variants of FMA, and then investigate the issue in detail for deterministic FMA. We show the problem is decidable for first-order logic with local data comparisons - an analog of first-order logic with successor. We also show instances of the problem for richer classes of first-order logic that are decidable.

Decidability questions for fairness in Petri nets

Abstract: For a Petri net and a group of transitions E a procedure is given to decide if there is an infinite firing sequence which is fdp w. r. t. E. An analysis of the complexity shows that even the problem if there is an arbitrary infinite firing sequence in a bounded net is hard for DSPACE(exp). If (strong) fairness is required the problem becomes undecidable, this is even shown for the question if there is an infinite firing sequence which is fair w. r. t. one transition t.

Temporal Logics on Words with Multiple Data Values

Abstract: The paper proposes and studies temporal logics for attributed words, that is, data words with a (finite) set of (attribute,value)-pairs at each position. It considers a basic logic which is a semantical fragment of the logic $LTL^\downarrow_1$ of Demri and Lazic with operators for navigation into the future and the past. By reduction to the emptiness problem for data automata it is shown that this basic logic is decidable. Whereas the basic logic only allows navigation to positions where a fixed data value occurs, extensions are studied that also allow navigation to positions with different data values. Besides some undecidable results it is shown that the extension by a certain UNTIL-operator with an inequality target condition remains decidable.