So we decided to build a model checker for Java programs. The first thing you need is a catchy name: JayHorn. That is Java + Horn clauses. Teme came up with that name because he was working on SeaHorn (C + Horn clauses) already. We’ll talk about Horn clauses in a bit, but first: What exactly is a model checker for Java? For us, this is a program that tries to find a proof that certain bad states in a Java program are never reachable. These bad states are specified by adding runtime assertions (where some assertions may be generated, e.g., that an object reference must not be Null before being accessed). Java can be a nasty language (try yourself) so we set our goals humble: let’s focus on simple Java programs first. No threads, no dynamic class loading, no strange corner cases of static initialization.

First, we looked at what’s out there. In particular for C, there is a set of tools, and even a tool competition. All these tools share a basic organization into three steps which we also used for building JayHorn:

• Parse the input program and simplify it as much as possible. Read more here.

• Translate the simplified program and the property that needs to be verified into an intermediate form that makes various lemmas about the language explicit. Read more here.

• Use a reasoning engine to prove the desired property and compute a certificate that the property holds or a counterexample that shows how it can be violated. Read more here.

A more detailed overview with related work and a few nice pictures can be found in our CAV 2016 tool paper.

# TL;DR Show me that Horn stuff

In a nutshell, the idea behind using Horn clauses is that we want a nice logic representation of the program where we don’t have to remove the loops, etc. Let’s look at this Java method:

void foo(int k) {
int r = 0;
for (int i=0;i<k;i++)
r+=2;
assert r==2*k;
}


where we want to prove the assertion r==2*k. When encoding the program as Horn clauses, we create one predicate for each control-location (basically for every place where a debugger could stop) over all program variables that are live (or can be observed with a debugger), and one Horn clause for each transition (or statement). So, in this example, we would start with creating one predicate $p0(r, k)$ for the location where we enter foo over the variables r and k. Then we add a second predicate for the entrance to the for loop $p1(r, k, i)$. Now, we can add our first Horn clause:

Which read as: “if we are at location p0 with any value for r and k, we can transition to p1 by updating r to zero, leaving k as it is and initializing i to zero”. Easy, isn’t it. Now we can add the loop condition check as follows:

where p2 is the location of the loop body and p3 is the location after the loop (i.e., the breakpoint before the assertion). The two Horn clauses we added read as: “if we are in p1 and i<k we go to the loop body p2”, and “if we are in p1 and i=k we go to p3”. Now we only need to update the loop body and the assertion:

Now how do we get from this to a proof that the assertion holds? Short answer: get a tool that does this, for instance Eldarica, Spacer or Z3. Horn solvers use methods like predicate abstraction, CEGAR, or PDR/IC3, and can handle systems with hundreds or thousands of clauses.

These tools try to find a formula for each of our predicates p1, p2, and p3 such that all Horn clauses become valid. For p0, we have to pick true, because we want to prove that the assertion holds from any initial state. For example, a tool could pick:

If we instantiate our Horn clauses with these assignments, we get the follwoing:

and obviously all these formulas are valid, which gives us a proof that we can call foo for any value of k and we have the guarantee that the assertion holds r==2*k .

The assignments to the predicates can be seen as invariants for the corresponding program location. You may have noted that we didn’t even worry that there is a loop in the program (which is usually the tricky part in verification). The Horn clause solver does that for us. For free. Awesome!

Now you might think: “wait, what happens if we pick a large k that causes an integer overflow”?

Well, you can’t expect that we explain you a full blown verifier in a single blog post! Live is hard and complicated and you don’t get stuff for free. Read the rest of this blog to find out what sort of terrible problems we faced while implementing JayHorn and how graceful we solved them.