A new decision procedure for finite sets and cardinality constraints in SMT

Kshitij Bansal, Andrew Reynolds, Clark Barrett, Cesare Tinelli

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We consider the problem of deciding the theory of finite sets with cardinality constraints using a satisfiability modulo theories solver. Sets are a common high-level data structure used in programming; thus, such a theory is useful for modeling program constructs directly. More importantly, sets are a basic construct of mathematics and thus natural to use when formalizing the properties of computational systems. We develop a calculus describing a modular combination of a procedure for reasoning about membership constraints with a procedure for reasoning about cardinality constraints. Cardinality reasoning involves tracking how different sets overlap. For efficiency, we avoid considering Venn regions directly, as done previous work. Instead, we develop a novel technique wherein potentially overlapping regions are considered incrementally as needed. We use a graph to track the interaction among the different regions. Initial experimental results demonstrate that the new technique is competitive with previous techniques and scales much better on certain classes of problems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAutomated Reasoning - 8th International Joint Conference, IJCAR 2016, Proceedings
EditorsNicola Olivetti, Ashish Tiwari
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages82-98
Number of pages17
ISBN (Print)9783319402284
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Event8th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning, IJCAR 2016 - Coimbra, Portugal
Duration: Jun 27 2016Jul 2 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9706
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other8th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning, IJCAR 2016
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityCoimbra
Period6/27/167/2/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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