Automating the Diagram Method to Prove Correctness of Program Transformations

Abstract: We report on the automation of a technique to prove the correctness of program transformations in higher-order program calculi which may permit recursive let-bindings as they occur in functional programming languages. A program transformation is correct if it preserves the observational semantics of programs. In our LRSX Tool the so-called diagram method is automated by combining unification, matching, and reasoning on alpha-renamings on the higher-order meta-language, and automating induction proofs via an encoding into termination problems of term rewrite systems. We explain the techniques, we illustrate the usage of the tool, and we report on experiments.