Separation logic is an extension of Hoare logic for reasoning about programs that use pointers. In particular, it copes well with aliasing (by providing a compact way of saying that a set of pointers do not alias) and a “frame rule” that lets you reason locally about a piece of code without getting bogged down in the surrounding context. This paper introduces separation logic, illustrates its use to verify a number of list, tree and dag algorithms [this is one of the real strengths of this paper] and discusses a lot of the work by the author and others on developing, defining, using and extending the different forms of separation logic that existed at the time (2002).
Papers related to Separation logic: a logic for shared mutable data structures
- VeriFast: Imperative programs as proofs [jacobs:vstte:2010]
- Separation logic [ohearn:cacm:2019]