SIG-SYS Fall 2008 - Talk on 09/24/08

Title: An Introduction to the Coq Proof Assistant

Speaker:Samuel E. Moelius III
Department of Computer & Information Sciences, University of Delaware

Abstract:
There is tremendous benefit in having a proof checked by a machine. In particular, it offers a high degree of certainty that the proof is actually correct --- much higher than if the proof were merely checked by humans.

Coq [1] is a proof assistant tailored to doing proof checking. Coq has been used, for example, to check proofs of non-trivial properties of certain programming languages and their implementations [2,3].

This talk will be an introduction to Coq. The talk will feature a demonstration of the CoqIDE.

The Coq source code that I plan to use during the talk is available here:
http://www.cis.udel.edu/~moelius/sigsys_talk.v

Participants are welcome to download the CoqIDE beforehand, and follow along.

The latest release of the CoqIDE is 8.1pl3. Binaries for Linux and Windows are available here:
http://coq.inria.fr/distrib-eng.html

A Mac version is available here:
http://coq.darwinports.com

References:
[1] The Coq proof assistant. http://coq.inria.fr
[2] Xavier Leroy and Sandrine Blazy. Formal verification of a C-like memory model and its uses for verifying program transformations. Journal of Automated Reasoning, 41(1):1-31, 2008.
[3] Adam Chlipala. Parametric Higher-Order Abstract Syntax for Mechanized Semantics. ICFP'08. To appear.

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