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An efficient SMT solver for string constraints. (English) Zbl 1404.68135
Summary: An increasing number of applications in verification and security rely on or could benefit from automatic solvers that can check the satisfiability of constraints over a diverse set of data types that includes character strings. Until recently, satisfiability solvers for strings were standalone tools that could reason only about fairly restricted fragments of the theory of strings and regular expressions (e.g., strings of bounded lengths). These solvers were based on reductions to satisfiability problems over other data types such as bit vectors or to automata decision problems. We present a set of algebraic techniques for solving constraints over a rich theory of unbounded strings natively, without reduction to other problems. These techniques can be used to integrate string reasoning into general, multi-theory SMT solvers based on the common $$\mathrm{DPLL}(T)$$ architecture. We have implemented them in our SMT solver cvc4, expanding its already large set of built-in theories to include a theory of strings with concatenation, length, and membership in regular languages. This implementation makes cvc4 the first solver able to accept a rich set of mixed constraints over strings, integers, reals, arrays and algebraic datatypes. Our initial experimental results show that, in addition, on pure string problems cvc4 is highly competitive with specialized string solvers accepting a comparable input language.
MSC:
 68T15 Theorem proving (deduction, resolution, etc.) (MSC2010) 68Q45 Formal languages and automata 68Q60 Specification and verification (program logics, model checking, etc.)
Software:
CVC4; HAMPI; JST; Kaluza; PASS; Pex; S3; StarExec; Stranger; z3; Z3-str
Full Text:
References:
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