Lawrence Robinson – Communications of the ACM

Research and Advances Dec 1 1978

An example of hierarchical design and proof

Hierarchical programming is being increasingly recognized as helpful in the construction of large programs. Users of hierarchical techniques claim or predict substantial increases in productivity and in the reliability of the programs produced. In this paper we describe a formal method for hierarchical program specification, implementation, and proof. We apply this method to a significant list processing problem and also discuss a number of extensions to current programming languages that ease hierarchical program design and proof.

Computing Applications

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Research and Advances Apr 1 1977

Proof techniques for hierarchically structured programs

A method for describing and structuring programs that simplifies proofs of their correctness is presented. The method formally represents a program in terms of levels of abstraction, each level of which can be described by a self-contained nonprocedural specification. The proofs, like the programs, are structured by levels. Although only manual proofs are described in the paper, the method is also applicable to semi-automatic and automatic proofs. Preliminary results are encouraging, indicating that the method can be applied to large programs, such as operating systems.

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