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authorPaul Buetow <paul@buetow.org>2026-07-06 10:32:34 +0300
committerPaul Buetow <paul@buetow.org>2026-07-06 10:32:34 +0300
commit3f906d03262150892e2297e621bfc56e425ef142 (patch)
tree79d69a4b011882716626565c27793ce04532227e /formal/README.md
parentf74812f8eda48194b622bdd318f35d3a6b6328cd (diff)
Close verification-coverage gaps; harness finds two more bugsHEADmaster
Extends the verification harness from sorts-only to the whole repo, and in doing so surfaces two further latent bugs (on top of the earlier hash-shift one): Bugs found and fixed: - queue/elementarypriority.go: max() seeded at the zero value, so an all-negative queue reported a phantom max of 0 and DeleteMax returned/removed the wrong element. Caught by the new queue permutation property (testing/quick generates negatives; the old test data never did). Seed from a[0] instead. - sort/sleep.go: result built on NewArrayList(len(a)) -- a slice of that LENGTH (len(a) zeros) -- then appended to, yielding double-length output with leading zeros. The old .Sorted()-only test passed because zeros-then-ascending is sorted. Caught by the new Sleep permutation check. Build from an empty slice. Coverage added: - queue/property_test.go: ordering + permutation (completeness) for both queues. - TestSleepSort now also checks permutation, not just Sorted(). - docs/verification.md: paper proofs for all search/set structures (Elementary, Hash, BST, red-black BST invariants, GoMap) and both priority queues. - formal/tla/ParallelSort.tla: exhaustive fork/join model of ParallelMerge/ ParallelQuick -- disjoint write-ranges (no data race) + termination. Wired into make verify-model. - formal/selection.go: second Gobra proof (memory safety + sortedness). Wired into make verify-formal. - docs/case-study-bugs-found.md: extensive write-up of all three bugs, how each was caught, why the old tests missed it, and the fix (supersedes the earlier single-bug case study). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'formal/README.md')
-rw-r--r--formal/README.md25
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/formal/README.md b/formal/README.md
index f667bdf..1bbb7e0 100644
--- a/formal/README.md
+++ b/formal/README.md
@@ -1,22 +1,24 @@
-# Gobra deductive proof
+# Gobra deductive proofs
-`insertion.go` is a **machine-checked** proof that an insertion sort is correct,
-verified by [Gobra](https://github.com/viperproject/gobra) — ETH Zurich's
-deductive verifier for Go, which translates annotated Go to the Viper
-intermediate language and discharges the proof obligations with the Z3 SMT
+`insertion.go` and `selection.go` are **machine-checked** proofs that these
+sorts are correct, verified by [Gobra](https://github.com/viperproject/gobra) —
+ETH Zurich's deductive verifier for Go, which translates annotated Go to the
+Viper intermediate language and discharges the proof obligations with the Z3 SMT
solver.
-Unlike the TLA+ model (which checks a hand-written abstraction) and the property
-tests (which sample inputs), this verifies the **actual Go source** for **all**
-inputs. Gobra proves two things about `Insertion`:
+Unlike the TLA+ models (which check a hand-written abstraction) and the property
+tests (which sample inputs), these verify the **actual Go source** for **all**
+inputs. Gobra proves two things about each sort:
1. **Memory safety** — every index access is in bounds. The permission
invariants `forall k :: 0 <= k < len(a) ==> acc(&a[k])` carry write access to
every element through both loops; Go itself cannot prove the absence of
index-out-of-range panics, Gobra can.
2. **Ordering** — on return `a` is sorted ascending
- (`forall p < q :: a[p] <= a[q]`), established via the two insertion-sort loop
- invariants in the annotations.
+ (`forall p < q :: a[p] <= a[q]`), established via the loop invariants in the
+ annotations. Selection sort needs the stronger "every prefix element ≤ every
+ suffix element" invariant; insertion sort uses a "sorted except at the
+ in-flight index" invariant.
The **permutation** half of full correctness (output is a rearrangement of the
input) is intentionally left to the property tests and the paper proof in
@@ -45,7 +47,8 @@ or directly:
```sh
podman run --rm -v "$PWD/formal:/gobra/formal:z" \
- ghcr.io/viperproject/gobra:latest -i /gobra/formal/insertion.go
+ ghcr.io/viperproject/gobra:latest \
+ -i /gobra/formal/insertion.go /gobra/formal/selection.go
```
Expected output ends with: