Monthly Archives: November 2022

Programs With Formally Recursive Procedures

This is the last of the “Program Optimization” problems, and the next section is the last one on “Miscellaneous” problems, which has 19 problems in it.  So, unless some diversion into a problem not in the book happens, we’re on the countdown through the last 20 problems!  The end is in sight!

The problem: Programs with Formally Recursive Procedures.  This is problem PO20 in the Appendix.

The description: Given a set of function definitions and a program that makes a sequence of function calls using those definitions (the paper by Winklmann uses Algol because he wrote it in 1982.  But any language that allows recursion should work).   Are any of the procedures in the program formally recursive?  For our purposes, “formally recursive” means that there exists a chain of calls that has a call to a function higher in the chain (not necessarily a parent, any ancestor will do).

My first instinct was to wonder if this problem was actually undecidable.  It’s not because we will have some fixed # of procedures d, and so any call chain needs to be checked only to depth d+1- if we get that far, we must have a repeat someplace.  If we never get that far, we can back up and check other call chains, eventually checking all of the paths through the call tree exhaustively.  The proof that the problem is in NP is in the paper, but it involves representing the call tree as a DAG so we can use one vertex for two equivalent paths.  Winklmann says that if you do that the number of vertices is “bounded” by the number of procedures in the program (he doesn’t say what that bound is, though).

Example: It’s hard to make a small example that’s not obvious.  How about this:

E(){
  E();
}

D(){
}

C(){
 A();
}

B(){
 D();
}

A(){
 B();
 F
}

main(){
  A()
}

If “F” is replaced by a call to C, the program is formally recursive, because the call chain main->A->C->A has a repeat.  If we replace that F with another call to B the program is not formally recursive because even though recursive functions like E exist (and even though B gets called twice in two different chains), there is no call chain that will start at main and hit E (or anything) more than once.

Reduction: Winklmann uses 3SAT.  So we start with a formula B with m clauses and n variables.  We’ll write some functions:

AssignXi(c1..cm): generates two calls to AssignXi+1. The function has one parameter for each clause.  The first call simulates setting variable Xi to true by passing a “true” value in all parameters that represent clauses that have variable Xi represented positively.  The second call simulates setting variable Xi to false by passing a “true” value in all parameters that represent clauses that have variable Xi returning negatively.  In all other cases, the function passes on the ci parameter it was given.

AssignXn(c1..cm): once we reach the end of the variables, we have to stop.  This function calls the “Check” function we’ll be defining in a minute twice, once reflecting setting variable Xn to true, one reflecting setting it to false.

Truej(cj+1..cm):There is one “true” function for each clause, each one has a parameter for all clauses with larger numbers. The paper writes this function a little weirdly, but I think a good definition is:

if(cj+1 is true){
Truej+1(cj+2..cm);
else
Falsej+1(cj+2...cm);
}

So, as long as the parameters are true, we’ll continue calling down through the  true functions to the end.  The last True function is what will make us formally recursive:

Truem(): Calls Assign1(False, False, ...False). Our main program will begin with a call to Assign1 with these exact parameters, so if we can get here, we will have found our recursive call.

The False functions end a call chain:

Falsej(cj+1..cm){
// do nothing
}

The Check function’s job is to start the appropriate call to True or False:

Check(c1..cm){
if(c1 is true)
True1(c2..cm);
else
False1(c2..cm);
}

Our main program is just a call to Assign1(False, False..False).  It’ll go through all of the various AssignXifuntions trying to assign variables (and thus clauses) to true. Each assignment will be checked, and each check will either hit a False function (meaning a clause wasn’t satisfied, and so we will backtrack and try an alternate assignment) or the final True function, which will generate our recursive call.  So this program has a recursive call chain if and only if the formula was satisfiable.

Notice that while the run of this program might take exponential time, that’s ok because reductions are concerned with the time it takes to create the new problem instance, and there are “just” 2m+n+1 functions to create.

Difficulty: 6.  This is a neat problem and reduction- I think the “write a backtracking program to try all combinations” is pretty gettable.  The hard part is the check and true/false functions at the end.  We can’t really use loops because loops make programs undecidable (you can’t show the problem is in NP by going down d+1 calls if you might have an infinite loop someplace and won’t get through all of those calls).  So we have to build a chain of recursive calls instead, with dead-ends to force the backtracking.

Non-Freedom for Loop-Free Program Schemes

Our old friend Bounded PCP is back for this reduction. What I actually originally wrote in that post was wrong (what I thought was the PCP reduction was actually their reduction for today’s problem), and I modified that post a little to reflect that.  I’m still sad that I can’t find an easy Bounded PCP reduction, but at least for today, all we need is the knowledge that it’s NP-Complete.

The problem: Non-Freedom for Loop-Free Program Schemes.  This is problem PO19 in the appendix.

The description: Suppose we have a set of instructions without loops (so just assignment of a variable, if statements that jump to other instructions, and halt.  Kind of like our Ianov Scheme instructions, but possibly allowing more than one variable).  “No loops” also means that our if statements cannot create a cycle.

Is there a directed path through this set of instructions that can never be followed by any actual computation?  (A program is “free” if all paths are reachable, so “non-free” means some path is not reachable).

Example: Here’s a very simple program:

1: if p then I2 else I3
2: x = 1
3: x = 2

If “p” is a predicate that is always true, than the path I1-I3 can never be realized and the program is non-free.  If p can be true or false, then all paths are possible and the program is free (and so this “non-free” instance is a “no”)

Reduction: As I alluded to at the start, Constable, Hunt, and Sahni reduce from Bounded PCP.  The idea is that they will take a BPCP instance and build a program where all paths are possible if and only if the BPCP instance is unsolvable.  The general idea is to build a scheme where we have 2 variables x1 and x2, which correspond to the two BPCP strings we are building.  At the end of the scheme, we have two predicates: P(x1) and P(x2).  If x1 and x2 are the same (which means we have built the same string) then we can’t get to a path that has true for one and false for the other.

The problem is that we could get that path if we choose a bad set of strings to make x1 and x2, and I’m not sure how we avoid that.  Here’s the picture they put in the paper basically as the entire proof:

I think maybe it might be an example for an instance of BCPP bounded at 1 string from each side (which is why the end case is a set of P2 predicates), but they don’t say and I’m not sure.  It’s not helped by the fact that they use “i” for the number of substrings used, and for an index in one of the strings, or that their font has the letter “l” look the same as the number “1”, or that they don’t explain anywhere why we have 2 levels of predicates, or what those predicates are supposed to be testing for.  I think the top predicates (the P1 ones) are choosing whether we take substring 1,2, and so on to build our solution.  But that means these “h” functions are appending the next character onto the string we’re building, and that’s not said anywhere either.

So, yeah, I don’t know what about this diagram doesn’t let me take incorrect choices for the BPCP problem, leading to a different x1 and x2, and creating a path that way. I definitely wish the paper had more explanation.

Difficulty: 8.  I’m not terribly filled with confidence that my explanation is right, because the explanation in the proof doesn’t really explain much to me.  Am I missing something?