Certificates and separation logic

Abstract

Modular and local reasoning about object-oriented programs has been widely studied for programing languages such as C# and Java. Once source programs have been proven, the next verification challenge is to ensure that the code produced by the compiler is correct. Since verifying a compiler can be extremely complex, this paper uses proof-transforming compilation, an alternative approach which automatically generates certificates, a bytecode proof, from proofs in the source language. The paper develops a bytecode logic using separation logic, and proof translation from proofs of object-oriented programs to bytecode. The translation also handles proofs for concurrent programs. The bytecode logic and the proof transformation are proven sound. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.