Kleene under a modal demonic star

Abstract

In relational semantics, the input-output semantics of a program is a relation on its set of states. We generalise this in considering elements of Kleene algebras as semantical values. In a nondeterministic context, the demonic semantics is calculated by considering the worst behaviour of the program. In this paper, we concentrate on while loops. Calculating the semantics of a loop is difficult, but showing the correctness of any candidate abstraction is much easier. For deterministic programs, Mills has described a checking method known as the while statement verification rule. A corresponding programming theorem for nondeterministic iterative constructs is proposed, proved and applied to an example. This theorem can be considered as a generalisation of the while statement verification rule to nondeterministic loops. The paper generalises earlier relation-algebraic work to the setting of modal Kleene algebra, an extension of Kozen’s Kleene algebra with tests that allows the internalisation of weakest liberal precondition and strongest liberal postcondition operators.