Outcome Separation Logic: Local Reasoning for Correctness and Incorrectness with Computational Effects
Noam Zilberstein, Angelina Saliling, Alexandra Soares da Silva · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages · 2024
Separation logic’s compositionality and local reasoning properties have led to significant advances in scalable static analysis. But program analysis has new challenges—many programs displaycomputational effectsand, orthogonally, static analyzers must handleincorrectnesstoo. We present Outcome Separation Logic (OSL), a program logic that is sound for both correctness and incorrectness reasoning in programs with varying effects. OSL has a frame rule—just like separation logic—but uses different underlying assumptions that open up local reasoning to a larger class of properties than can be handled by any single existing logic. Building on this foundational theory, we also define symbolic execution algorithms that use bi-abduction to derive specifications for programs with effects. This involves a newtri-abductionprocedure to analyze programs whose execution branches due to effects such as nondeterministic or probabilistic choice. This work furthers the compositionality promised by separation logic by opening up the possibility for greater reuse of analysis tools across two dimensions: bug-finding vs verification in programs with varying effects.