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Reentrant Readers-Writers: A Case Study Combining Model Checking with Theorem Proving

  • Conference paper
Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5596))

Abstract

The classic readers-writers problem has been extensively studied. This holds to a lesser degree for the reentrant version, where it is allowed to nest locking actions. Such nesting is useful when a library is created with various procedures that each start and end with a lock. Allowing nesting makes it possible for these procedures to call each other. We considered an existing widely used industrial implementation of the reentrant readers-writers problem. We modeled it using a model checker revealing a serious error: a possible deadlock situation. The model was improved and checked satisfactorily for a fixed number of processes. To achieve a correctness result for an arbitrary number of processes the model was converted to a theorem prover with which it was proven.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Bernard van Gastel, Leonard Lensink, Sjaak Smetsers & Marko van Eekelen

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  1. Bernard van Gastel
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  2. Leonard Lensink
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  3. Sjaak Smetsers
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  4. Marko van Eekelen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rockwell Collins, 7805 Telegraph Rd. 100, 55438, Bloomington, MN, USA

    Darren Cofer

  2. Dipartimento di Sistemi e Informatica, Università di Firenze, Via S. Marta 3, 50139, Firenze, Italy

    Alessandro Fantechi

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van Gastel, B., Lensink, L., Smetsers, S., van Eekelen, M. (2009). Reentrant Readers-Writers: A Case Study Combining Model Checking with Theorem Proving. In: Cofer, D., Fantechi, A. (eds) Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems. FMICS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5596. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03240-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03240-0_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-03239-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-03240-0

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