Abstract We introduce a high-level language with Python-like syntax for string-to-string, polyregular, first-order definable transductions. This language features function calls, boolean variables, and nested for-loops. We devise and implement a complete decision procedure for the verification of such programs against a first-order specification. The decision procedure reduces the verification problem to the decidable first-order theory of finite words (extensively studied in automata theory), which we discharge using either complete tools specific to this theory (MONA), or to general-purpose SMT solvers (Z3, CVC5).

International audience

Our starting point are register automata for data words, in the style of Kaminski and Francez. We study the effects of the single-use restriction, which says that a register is emptied immediately after being used. We show that under the single-use restriction, the theory of automata for data words becomes much more robust. The main results are: (a) five different machine models are equivalent as language acceptors, including one-way and two-way single-use register automata; (b) one can recover some of the algebraic theory of languages over finite alphabets, including a version of the Krohn-Rhodes Theorem; (c) there is also a robust theory of transducers, with four equivalent models, including two-way single use transducers and a variant of streaming string transducers for data words. These results are in contrast with automata for data words without the single-use restriction, where essentially all models are pairwise non-equivalent.

We consider extensions of monadic second-order logic over ω-words, which are obtained by adding one language that is not ω-regular. We show that if the added language L has a neutral letter, then the resulting logic is necessarily undecidable. A corollary is that the ω-regular languages are the only decidable Boolean-closed full trio over ω-words.