On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic

Spatial conjunction is a powerful construct for reasoning about dynamically allocateddata structures, as well as concurrent, distributed and mobile computation. Whileresearchers have identified many uses of spatial conjunction, its precise expressive powercompared to traditional logical constructs w...

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Main Authors: Kuncak, Viktor, Rinard, Martin
Other Authors: Computer Architecture
Language:en_US
Published: 2005
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30498
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author Kuncak, Viktor
Rinard, Martin
author2 Computer Architecture
author_facet Computer Architecture
Kuncak, Viktor
Rinard, Martin
author_sort Kuncak, Viktor
collection MIT
description Spatial conjunction is a powerful construct for reasoning about dynamically allocateddata structures, as well as concurrent, distributed and mobile computation. Whileresearchers have identified many uses of spatial conjunction, its precise expressive powercompared to traditional logical constructs was not previously known.In this paper we establish the expressive power of spatial conjunction. We construct anembedding from first-order logic with spatial conjunction into second-order logic, and moresurprisingly, an embedding from full second order logic into first-order logic with spatialconjunction. These embeddings show that the satisfiability of formulas in first-order logicwith spatial conjunction is equivalent to the satisfiability of formulas in second-order logic.These results explain the great expressive power of spatial conjunction and can be usedto show that adding unrestricted spatial conjunction to a decidable logic leads to an undecidablelogic. As one example, we show that adding unrestricted spatial conjunction totwo-variable logic leads to undecidability.On the side of decidability, the embedding into second-order logic immediately implies thedecidability of first-order logic with a form of spatial conjunction over trees. The embeddinginto spatial conjunction also has useful consequences: because a restricted form of spatialconjunction in two-variable logic preserves decidability, we obtain that a correspondinglyrestricted form of second-order quantification in two-variable logic is decidable. The resultinglanguage generalizes the first-order theory of boolean algebra over sets and is useful inreasoning about the contents of data structures in object-oriented languages.
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spelling mit-1721.1/304982019-04-11T06:23:34Z On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic Kuncak, Viktor Rinard, Martin Computer Architecture Spatial conjunction is a powerful construct for reasoning about dynamically allocateddata structures, as well as concurrent, distributed and mobile computation. Whileresearchers have identified many uses of spatial conjunction, its precise expressive powercompared to traditional logical constructs was not previously known.In this paper we establish the expressive power of spatial conjunction. We construct anembedding from first-order logic with spatial conjunction into second-order logic, and moresurprisingly, an embedding from full second order logic into first-order logic with spatialconjunction. These embeddings show that the satisfiability of formulas in first-order logicwith spatial conjunction is equivalent to the satisfiability of formulas in second-order logic.These results explain the great expressive power of spatial conjunction and can be usedto show that adding unrestricted spatial conjunction to a decidable logic leads to an undecidablelogic. As one example, we show that adding unrestricted spatial conjunction totwo-variable logic leads to undecidability.On the side of decidability, the embedding into second-order logic immediately implies thedecidability of first-order logic with a form of spatial conjunction over trees. The embeddinginto spatial conjunction also has useful consequences: because a restricted form of spatialconjunction in two-variable logic preserves decidability, we obtain that a correspondinglyrestricted form of second-order quantification in two-variable logic is decidable. The resultinglanguage generalizes the first-order theory of boolean algebra over sets and is useful inreasoning about the contents of data structures in object-oriented languages. 2005-12-22T02:14:54Z 2005-12-22T02:14:54Z 2004-10-25 MIT-CSAIL-TR-2004-067 MIT-LCS-TR-970 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30498 en_US Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 16 p. 15950544 bytes 692945 bytes application/postscript application/pdf application/postscript application/pdf
spellingShingle Kuncak, Viktor
Rinard, Martin
On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title_full On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title_fullStr On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title_full_unstemmed On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title_short On Spatial Conjunction as Second-Order Logic
title_sort on spatial conjunction as second order logic
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30498
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