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Release-notes

Note-4-0

ACL2 Version 4.0 (July, 2010) Notes

NOTE! New users can ignore these release notes, because the documentation has been updated to reflect all changes that are recorded here.

Below we roughly organize the changes since Version 3.6.1 into the following categories of changes: existing features, new features, heuristic improvements, bug fixes, distributed books, Emacs support, and experimental versions. Each change is described in just one category, though of course many changes could be placed in more than one category. Also see note-3-6-1 for other changes since Version 3.6.

CHANGES TO EXISTING FEATURES

There have been extensive changes to the handling of compiled files for books, which may generally be invisible to most users. The basic idea is that when compiled files are loaded on behalf of include-book, they are now loaded before events in the book are processed, not afterwards. This can speed up calls of include-book, especially if the underlying Lisp compiles all definitions on the fly (as is the case for CCL and SBCL). One functional change is that for keyword argument :load-compiled-file of include-book, the values :comp-raw, :try, and :comp! are no longer legal. (Note that the handling of :comp-raw was actually broken, so it seems that this value wasn't actually used by anyone; also, the handling of :comp! formerly could cause an error in some Lisp platforms, including SBCL.) Another change is that if include-book is called with :load-compiled-file t, then each sub-book must have a compiled file or a so-called ``expansion file''; see book-compiled-file. In the unlikely event that this presents a problem, the makefile provides a way to build with compilation disabled; see compilation. Users of raw mode (see set-raw-mode) will be happy to know that include-book now works if there is an up-to-date compiled file for the book, since portcullis commands are now incorporated into that compiled file. The mechanism for saving expansion files has changed, and the :save-expansion argument of certify-book has been eliminated; see certify-book. More discussion of ACL2's new handling of book compilation is described in a new documentation topic; see book-compiled-file.

It was possible to get a hard Lisp error when certifying a book with a redundant defconst form whose term is not identical to the existing defconst form for the same name. The following example illustrates the problem, which has been fixed (as part of the change in handling of compiled files for books, described above). Imagine that after the initial (in-package "ACL2") form, file foo.lisp has just the form (defconst *a* (append nil nil)). Then before the fix, we could have:

ACL2 !>(defconst *a* nil)
[[output omitted]]
ACL2 !>(certify-book "foo" 1)
[[initial output omitted]
* Step 5:  Compile the functions defined in "/v/joe/foo.lisp".
Compiling /v/joe/foo.lisp.
End of Pass 1.
End of Pass 2.
OPTIMIZE levels: Safety=0 (No runtime error checking), Space=0, Speed=3
Finished compiling /vjoe/foo.lisp.
Loading /v/joe/foo.lisp

Error: Illegal attempt to redeclare the constant *A*.

The wormhole facility has been changed to repair a bug that allowed guard violations to go undetected. The major change has to do with the treatment of what used to be called the ``pseudo-flag'' argument which has been replaced by a quoted lambda expression. See note-4-0-wormhole-changes for help in converting calls of wormhole. Also see see wormhole and see wormhole-eval.

The function assign-wormhole-output has been eliminated but its functionality can be provided by wormhole-eval.

The ACL2 tutorial has been greatly expanded, for example to include a self-contained discussion of rewriting. See ACL2-tutorial.

Formerly, the mbe macro and must-be-equal function were disallowed in any definition within an encapsulate having a non-empty signature. Now, these are allowed provided the definition has been declared to be non-executable (see defun-nx). As a result, defevaluator events may now include must-be-equal among the function symbols known by the evaluator; this had not previously been allowed. Thanks to Sol Swords for discussions leading to this relaxation for defevaluator.

Princ$ now prints strings more efficiently. Thanks to Jared Davis for suggesting the improvements to princ$.

The use of xargs declaration :non-executable t no longer requires the absence of state or declared stobjs among the formal parameters of a function definition. As before, the use of :non-executable t turns off single-threadedness checking for the body, and also as before, attempts to execute the function will fail. Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting this relaxation (for automatic generation of so-called ``flag functions'' for definitions using mutual-recursion).

The documentation has been improved for explaining to advanced users the details of the ACL2 hint mechanism; see hints-and-the-waterfall, and see the example about nonlinearp-default-hint in distributed book books/hints/basic-tests.lisp. Thanks to Robert Krug for useful discussions, in particular suggesting the above example as one to be explained with the documentation.

The time$ macro has been enhanced to allow user control of the timing message that is printed, and of when it is printed. See time$. Thanks to Jared Davis for providing the essential design, helpful documentation (largely incorporated), and an initial implementation for raw Lisp.

The :ttags argument to include-book had been required when including a certified book that uses trust tags. This is no longer the case: essentially, :ttags defaults to :all except that warnings will be printed. Thanks to Jared Davis for requesting such a relaxation, and to him and Sandip Ray for useful discussions.

The definition of mv-let has been modified so that the single-step macroexpansion (see trans1) of its calls can be evaluated. Thanks to Pete Manolios for bringing this evaluation issue to our attention and ensuing discussions.

All calls of so-called ``guard-holders'' — prog2$, must-be-equal (from calls of see mbe), ec-call, and mv-list — are now removed before storing hypotheses of rules of class :rewrite or :linear. Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting this enhancement and sending the following example in the case of rewrite rules.

(defthm foo
  (prog2$ (cw "asdf")
          (and (equal (car (cons x y)) x)
               (equal (cdr (cons x y)) y))))

The handling of fmt directive ~s has been modified so that if the argument is a symbol that would normally be printed using vertical bars (|), then that symbol is printed as with ~f. Thanks to Jared Davis for providing the following example showing that treatment of ~s was a bit unexpected: (cw "~s0.~%" '|fo\|o|).

Error messages have been improved for ill-formed terms (in ACL2's so-called ``translation'' routines). Thanks to Jared Davis for requesting such an enhancement.

Modified defun-sk so that it executes in :logic mode. Previously, evaluation of a defun-sk event in :program mode caused a somewhat inscrutable error, but now, :program mode is treated the same as :logic mode for purposes of defun-sk.

The ``system hacker'' commands (redef+) and (redef-) are now embedded event forms (see embedded-event-form), hence may be used in books as well as in progn and encapsulate events. Also, these two commands are now no-ops in raw Lisp.

The function symbol worldp (in the "ACL2" package) has been renamed to plist-worldp.

The function gc$-fn (resulting from macroexpansion of gc$) is now in :logic mode. Thanks to Jared Davis for requesting this change.

The user now has control over whether compilation is used, for example whether or not certify-book compiles by default, using function set-compiler-enabled. See compilation.

Modified the conversion of relative to absolute pathnames in portcullis commands for book certification. Now, more pathnames remain as relative pathnames.

The "Ttags" warning that can be printed by include-book is now given even if set-inhibit-output-lst has specified `warning'. To suppress it, specify warning! instead, for example, (set-inhibit-output-lst '(acl2::warning! acl2::proof-tree)).

On occasion, ACL2 prints the message ``Flushing current installed world'' as it cleans up when certain actions (installing a world) are interrupted. This operation has been sped up considerably. If your session includes many events, you can probably speed up any such operation further by invoking reset-prehistory. Thanks to Jared Davis for sending a query that led us to make this improvement.

Calls of the form (ec-call (must-be-equal logic exec)) are no longer allowed, since we do not have confidence that they would be handled correctly.

The underlying function for good-bye (and hence for exit and quit) is now in :logic mode. Thanks to Jared Davis for requesting this enhancement.

We now require that every function symbol in the signature of an encapsulate event have a :logic mode definition at the end of the first pass, not merely a :program mode definition (which formerly was sufficient). You can still define such a function in :program mode, provided it is followed by a :logic mode definition (where of course both definitions are local, since we are discussing functions introduced in the signature). Thanks to Carl Eastlund for bringing this issue to our attention. (Note: An analogous modification has been made for :bdd hints as well.)

The following functions now have raw Lisp implementations that may run faster than their ACL2 definitions: assoc-eq, assoc-equal, member-eq, member-equal, subsetp-eq, subsetp-equal, remove-eq, remove-equal, position-eq, and position-equal. Thanks to Jared Davis for suggesting that we consider such an improvement.

We now avoid infinite loops caused when tracing functions that implement trace$. Thanks to Rob Sumners and Eric Smith for useful discussions.

The implementation of trace! has been modified slightly, to accommodate the fix for ``some holes in the handling of trust tags'' described later, below.

This item applies unless the host Lisp is GCL. An interrupt (control-c) will now cause a proof to exit normally in most cases, by simulating a timeout, as though with-prover-time-limit had been called with a time-limit of 0. If the first interrupt doesn't terminate the proof, a second one should do so (because a different, more ``severe'' mechanism is used after the first attempt). As a result, redo-flat should work as one might expect even if a proof is interrupted. Thanks to Dave Greve for requesting this enhancement to redo-flat. Technical note: for reasons related to this change, time-limits are no longer checked in evaluator functions (ev-fncall, ev, ev-lst, ev-fncall-w, ev-w, and ev-w-lst).

It is now legal for proof-builder macro-commands to appear in :instructions that are used in place of :hints. Thanks to Sandip Ray for (most recently) requesting this feature.

The value of :command-conventions for ld special variable ld-post-eval-print is now treated as though it were t if the value ld special variable ld-error-triples is nil. The following example illustrates this change.

ACL2 !>(ld-post-eval-print state) ; default
:COMMAND-CONVENTIONS
ACL2 !>(ld-error-triples state) ; default
T
ACL2 !>(set-ld-error-triples nil state)
*** Then, before the change:
ACL2 !>(mv t 3 state)
 3
*** Instead, after the change:
ACL2 !>(mv t 3 state)
(T 3 <state>)

The default behavior of ld has been changed. Formerly when an error occurred that halted a subsidiary call of ld, then the parent ld would continue. That is no longer the case. Consider the following example.

(ld '((ld '((defun f (x) x)
            (defun bad (x)) ; ERROR -- missing the body
            ))
      (defun g (x) x)))

Formerly, g would be defined in the resulting logical world. Now, the error halts not only the inner ld but also the outer ld. See ld, and for details of the new default value for :ld-error-action, :RETURN!, see ld-error-action. Also see the paragraph below about a new utility, :p!. Thanks to Robert Krug and Sandip Ray for helpful discussions.

Environment variable ACL2-CUSTOMIZATION has been replaced by ACL2_CUSTOMIZATION — that is, the hyphen has been replaced by an underscore — so that it can be set conveniently in the bash shell. See ACL2-customization.

The ``Warnings:'' summary is now omitted when there are no warnings, where formerly ``Warnings: None'' was printed. Thanks to Jared Davis for suggesting this change.

We have modified the generation of constraints for encapsulate events in two primary ways, neither of them likely to affect many users. One change is that the virtual movement of definitions and theorems to in front of an encapsulate event, or of definitions to behind that event, is no longer inhibited in the case of nested encapsulates with non-empty signatures. The following example illustrates the other change, as discussed below.

(encapsulate
 ((f (x) t))
 (local (defun f (x) x))
 (defun g (x) (cons x (f x)))
 (defun h (x) (g x))
 (defthm h-is-f (equal (car (h x)) x)))

Previously, the constraint on f and h was essentially the conjunction of the definition of h and the theorem h-is-f. Now, the definition of g is conjoined as well; moreover, g receives the same constraint as do f and h, where previously g was only constrained by its definition. While we are not aware of a soundness bug caused by the previous approach, the new approach follows more precisely the intended notion of constraint.

The use of trace$ (or trace!) option :multiplicity had been required when option :native was supplied. This is no longer the case. Also, a bug has been fixed that had prevented :multiplicity from working properly in GCL and Allegro CL.

Several errors have been eliminated that formerly occurred when the constraints for a function symbol were unknown because it was constrained using a dependent clause-processor (see define-trusted-clause-processor. Now, it is assumed that the supporters argument in a define-trusted-clause-processor event is such that every ancestor of any function symbol constrained by the ``promised encapsulate'' of that event among, or ancestral in, those supporters. Thanks to Sol Swords, Sandip Ray, and Jared Davis for helpful discussions.

The notion of constraint for functions introduced by defun has been modified slightly. No longer do we remove from the body of the definition calls of so-called ``guard-holders'': prog2$, must-be-equal, ec-call, and mv-list, and uses of the-error generated by the. Also, we now expand calls of the-error with the same aggressive heuristics applied to a number of other functions (technically, adding it to the list *expandable-boot-strap-non-rec-fns*).

NEW FEATURES

A new event, defattach, allows evaluation of calls of constrained (encapsulated) functions. In particular, users can now, in principle, soundly modify ACL2 source code; please feel free to contact the ACL2 implementors if you are interested in doing so. See defattach.

Eric Smith has noticed that if you exit the break-rewrite loop using :a! during an ld of a file, then all changes to the logical world are discarded that were made during that call of ld. A new utility, :p!, pops just one level instead, and avoids discarding that work. (This change is related to an item above, ``The default behavior of ld has been changed.'') Thanks to Eric for pointing out this issue.

New function mv-list is the identity function logically, but converts multiple values to lists. The first argument is the number of values, so an example form is as follows, where foo returns three values: (mv-list 3 (foo x y)). Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting this feature and for reporting a soundness bug in one of our preliminary implementations.

A new state global variable, host-lisp, has as its value a keyword whose value depends on the underlying Common Lisp implementation. Use (@ host-lisp) to see its value.

It is now possible to write documentation for HTML without error when there are links to nonexistent documentation topics. See the comments in macro acl2::write-html-file at the end of file doc/write-acl2-html.lisp. When there are such errors, they should be easier to understand than previously. Thanks to Alan Dunn for providing the initial modifications.

It is now possible to inhibit specified parts of the Summary printed at the conclusion of an event. See set-inhibited-summary-types. Also see with-output, in particular the discussion of the new :summary keyword. Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting more control over the Summary.

A new :hints keyword, :case-split-limitations, can override the default case-split-limitations settings (see set-case-split-limitations) in the simplifier. Thanks to Ian Johnson for requesting this addition and providing an initial implementation.

It is now possible to defer and avoid some ttag-related output; see set-deferred-ttag-notes. Thanks to Jared Davis for requesting less verbosity from ttag-related output.

A new command, :pl2, allows you to restrict the rewrite rules printed that apply to a given term. See pl2. Thanks to Robert Krug for requesting such a capability.

ACL2 now provides a utility for canonicalizing filenames, so that soft links are resolved; see canonical-pathname. Moreover, ACL2 uses this utility in its own sources, which can eliminate some issues. In particular, include-book with argument :ttags :all no longer breaks when given a book-name differing from the book-name that was used at certification time; thanks to Sol Swords for reporting that problem. Also, certain errors have been eliminated involving the combination of packages in the certification world and trust tags; thanks to Jared Davis for sending an example of that problem.

You can now suppress or enable guard-checking for an individual form; see with-guard-checking. Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting this feature.

The walkabout utility has been documented (thanks to Rob Sumners for suggesting this documentation). This utility can make it easy to explore a large cons tree. New interactive commands (pp n) and (pp print-level print-length) have been added to restrict how much of the current object is displayed. See walkabout.

Rules of class :type-prescription may now be provided a :backchain-limit-lst keyword. The default behavior is unchanged, but now type-set is sensitive not only to the new :backchain-limit-lst of a :type-prescription rule (if supplied) but to the default-backchain-limit of the current logical world. Setting of backchain-limits can now specify either the new (type-set) limit or the old limit (for rewriting); see set-default-backchain-limit and see set-backchain-limit. Moreover, the functions default-backchain-limit and backchain-limit now take a second argument of :ts or :rewrite to specify which backchain-limit is desired.

HEURISTIC IMPROVEMENTS

The so-called ``too-many-ifs'' heuristic has been modified. Such a heuristic has been employed in ACL2 (and previous Boyer-Moore provers) for many years, in order to limit the introduction of calls of if by non-recursive functions. Most users need not be concerned with this change, but two proofs in the regression suite (out of thousands) needed trivial adjustment, so user proofs could need tweaking. In one application, this modification sped up proofs by 15%; but the change in runtime for the regression suite is negligible, so such speedups may vary. Thanks to Sol Swords for providing a test from ACL2 runs at Centaur Technology, which was useful in re-tuning this heuristic.

Guard proof obligations could have size quadratic in the number of clauses in a case statement. This inefficiency has been removed with a change that eliminates a hypothesis of the form (not (eql term constant)) when there is already a stronger hypothesis, equating the same term with a different constant. Thanks to Sol Swords for bringing this problem to our attention and suggesting an alternate approach to solving it, which we may consider in the future if related efficiency problems persist.

We adjusted the heuristics for determining induction schemes in the presence of ruler-extenders, when handling calls of a function symbol that is a ruler-extender, in either of two cases: either the function takes only one argument; or the function is prog2$ or ec-call, and the first argument contains no recursive call. These cases are treated more directly as though the ruler-extender call is replaced by the unique (in the case of prog2$ and ec-call, the second) argument.

A new :type-prescription rule, true-listp-append, has been added:

(implies (true-listp b)
         (true-listp (append a b)))

If you are interested in the motivation for adding this rule, see comments in true-listp-append in ACL2 source file axioms.lisp.

The use of :forward-chaining lemmas has been improved slightly. In previous versions, a conclusion derived by forward chaining was discarded if it was derivable by type-set reasoning, since it was ``already provable.'' But this heuristic prevented the conclusion from triggering further forward chaining. This has been fixed. Thanks to Dave Greve for pointing out this problem.

The fundamental utility that turns an IF expression into a set of clauses has been optimized to better handle tests of the form (equal x 'constant) and their negations. This eliminates an exponential explosion in large case analyses. But it comes at the inconvenience of sometimes reordering the clauses produced. The latter aspect of this change may require you to change some Subgoal numbers in proof hints. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Certification can now run faster (specifically, the compilation phase) for books with very large structures generated by make-event, when there is significant sharing of substructure, because of a custom optimization of the Lisp reader. Thanks to Sol Swords for bringing this efficiency issue to our attention.

Jared Davis reported inefficiency in certain make-event evaluation due to a potentially expensive ``bad lisp object'' check on the expansion produced by the make-event. This check has been eliminated except in the case that the expansion introduces packages (for example, by including a book during the expansion phase that introduces packages). Thanks to Jared for providing a helpful example.

The application of rules of class :induction had the potential to loop (as commented in ACL2 source function apply-induction-rule). This has been fixed. Thanks to Daron Vroon and Pete Manolios for sending nice examples causing the loop.

Heuristics have been tweaked so that false goals may be simplified to nil that had formerly been left unchanged by simplification, perhaps resulting in useless and distracting proofs by induction. Thanks to Pete Manolios for pointing out this issue by sending the following example: (thm (<= (+ 1 (acl2-count x)) 0)). (Technical explanation: When every literal in a clause simplifies to nil, even though we might not normally delete one or more such literals, we will replace the entire clause by the false clause.)

Improved the efficiency of the built-in function, take. Thanks to Bob Boyer for suggesting this improvement.

ACL2 can now use evaluation to relieve hypotheses when applying :type-prescription rules. Thanks to Peter Dillinger and Dave Greve for requesting this enhancement, and to Robert Krug for a relevant discussion long ago.

Evaluation has been sped up during theorems for calls of mv-let, by avoiding repeated evaluation of the expression to which its variables are bound. Thanks to Sol Swords for requesting this improvement and sending an illustrative example.

Modified a heuristic to avoid the opening up non-recursive function calls on calls of hide involving if-expressions. For example, the thm form below is now admitted

(defun bar (x)
  (cons x x))
(thm (equal (bar (hide (if a b c)))
     (cons (hide (if a b c)) (hide (if a b c)))))

BUG FIXES

Fixed a soundness bug in destructor elimination, which was preventing some cases from being generated. Thanks to Eric Smith for reporting this bug and sending a helpful example. (Technical detail: the fixes were in ACL2 source functions apply-instantiated-elim-rule and eliminate-destructors-clause1, and comments in the former contain Eric's example.)

Fixed a bug that supported a proof of nil by exploiting the fact that portcullis commands were not included in check-sum computations in a book's certificate. For such a proof of nil, see the relevant comment in the ACL2 source file ld.lisp under (deflabel note-4-0 ...).

Changed the implementation of add-include-book-dir. The previous implementation could allow relative pathnames to be stored in the portcullis commands of certificates of books, which perhaps could lead to unsoundness (though we did not try to exploit this to prove nil). Thanks to Jared Davis for reporting a bug in our first new implementation. An additional change to both add-include-book-dir and delete-include-book-dir is that these now work in raw-mode (see set-raw-mode). (Thanks to Dave Greve for suggesting a reduction in the warnings we produced related to raw-mode.) Note that it is no longer permitted to make a direct call of the form (table acl2-defaults-table :include-book-dir-alist ...); use add-include-book-dir instead.

Fixed a soundness bug related to xargs keyword :non-executable. New macros, defun-nx and defund-nx, have been provided for declaring functions to be non-executable; see defun-nx. While we expect this bug to occur only rarely if at all in practice, the following example shows how it could be evoked.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;; Book sub.lisp
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(in-package "ACL2")
(defun f ()
  (declare (xargs :guard t
                  :non-executable t))
  (mv-let (a b c)
          (mv 3 4)
          (declare (ignore a b))
          c))
(defun g ()
  (declare (xargs :guard t))
  (prog2$ (mv-let (x y z)
                  (mv 2 3 4)
                  (declare (ignore x y z))
                  nil)
          (f)))
(defthm g-nil
  (equal (g) nil)
  :hints (("Goal" :in-theory (disable (f))))
  :rule-classes nil)
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;; Book top.lisp
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(in-package "ACL2")
(include-book "sub")
(defthm contradiction
  nil
  :hints (("Goal" :use g-nil))
  :rule-classes nil)

The modification described above pertaining to defun-nx also prevents execution of non-executable functions that have been traced. The following example illustrates the problem; now, the following defun of g is illegal, and the problem disappears if defun-nx is used instead.

(defun g (x) ; Use defun-nx to avoid an error after Version_3.6.1.
  (declare (xargs :guard t :non-executable t))
  x)
(g 3) ; causes error, as expected
(trace$ g)
(g 3) ; returned 3 before the bug fix; after fix, causes error as expected

A hard error was possible when attempting to include an uncertified book containing events of the form (make-event '(local ...)). This has been fixed. Thanks to Sol Swords for bringing this issue to our attention.

Fixed a bug in the heuristic improvement described for Version_3.6 (see note-3-6) as ``We simplified induction schemes....'' The bug had prevented, in unusual cases such as the following (notice the impossible case), a proof by induction.

(defun foo (a x)
  (and (consp x)
       (case a
         (0 (foo (car x) (cdr x)))
         (1 (foo (cdr x) (car x)))
         (0 (foo a (cons x x))))))
(in-theory (disable (:type-prescription foo)))
(thm (atom (foo a x)))

Macro cw-gstack did not work with an :evisc-tuple argument. This has been fixed by changing cw-gstack so that it now evaluates its arguments. Thanks to Sol Swords for bringing this bug to our attention.

Fixed a bug in :pso during the printing of failure messages for termination proofs.

Fixed a bug in the handling of #. (see sharp-dot-reader). Thanks to Bob Boyer for bringing this bug to our attention.

Replaced a hard Lisp error with a clean error, in certain cases that a :hints value is erroneously supplied as a non-nil atom. Example: (thm (equal x x) :hints 3).

Fixed a bug in the interaction of function tracing with conversion of a function from :program to :logic mode. The following example illustrates what had been wrong.

(defun f (x)
  (declare (xargs :mode :program))
  (car x))
(f 3) ; raw Lisp hard error
(trace$ f)
(f 3) ; raw Lisp hard error (still)
(defun f (x) (car x)) ; upgrade f to :logic mode
(f 3) ; clean guard violation; f is no longer traced
(trace$) ; uh oh - f is shown as traced
(untrace$ f)
(f 3) ; OUCH: hard Lisp error because old :program mode definition of
      ; the executable counterpart (sometimes called *1*f) was restored!

Made a fix so that when building ACL2 with `make' option ACL2_SAFETY=3, there will no longer be any safety-0 compiled code generated. Thanks to Gary Byers for bringing this bug to our attention.

Fixed a bug in the handling of override-hints that generate custom keyword hints (see custom-keyword-hints) involving the variable stable-under-simplificationp. Thanks to Ian Johnson for bringing this bug to our attention with explanation that included a helpful example, included as comment in the ACL2 source code for function apply-override-hint.

The saved_acl2 script in CLISP could contain unexpected characters where simple newlines were expected. Dave Greve found this in a Cygwin environment on Windows. Thanks to Dave for reporting this bug and experimenting with a fix, and thanks to the CLISP folks for providing helpful information.

Fixed a bug that could make :oops cause an error. Also, the oops command can no longer take you back before a reset-prehistory event.

(GCL only) Fixed a bug that could occur when calling trace in raw Lisp in GCL.

Proof summaries have been improved, so that they account for runes used in rewriting that takes place when generating goals to be proved in a forcing round. Thanks to Jared Davis for sending us an example illustrating this issue.

Fixed a bug that (at least in CCL) could put extra backslashes (`\') in a pathname that ACL2 writes out to the executable script created by a build. Thanks to Gary Byers for explaining that the CCL behavior is legal (for our previous use of Common Lisp function merge-pathnames).

We closed some holes in the handling of trust tags (also known as ``ttags''; see defttag) by include-book. The following example illustrates this rather subtle situation. Consider the following book.

(in-package "ACL2")
(make-event
 (er-progn
  (encapsulate
   ()
   (defttag :foo)
   (value-triple "Imagine something bad here!"))
  (value '(value-triple :some-value)))
 :check-expansion t)

Formerly, the following commands succeeded.

(certify-book "test3" 0 t :ttags :all)
:u
(include-book "test3" :ttags nil)

But because of make-event keyword argument :check-expansion t, we know that the event (defttag :foo) is evaluated by the above include-book form, and hence the :ttags argument of include-book, above, should have specified :foo. The problem was that defttag forms evaluated during make-event expansion did not contribute to the trust tag information stored in the book's certificate. Note: Because of this change, one should avoid using make-event with :check-expansion t when the expansion would introduce a defttag event during include-book but not certify-book time. For an example illustrating this issue, see make-event-details, specifically the new version of the section labeled ``A note on ttags'' at the end of that documentation topic.

Closed a small loophole that had the potential, in rare circumstances, to violate atomicity of under-the-hood updates for ACL2 arrays.

The following example was formerly allowed, but resulted in a guard-verified function (here, g) whose guard proof obligation is not a theorem outside the encapsulate event. We now disallow guard verification for functions introduced non-locally inside an encapsulate event unless we determine that the proof obligations hold outside the encapsulate event as well.

(encapsulate
 ((f (x) t))
 (local (defun f (x) (declare (xargs :guard t)) (consp x)))
 ;; ERROR!
 (defun g (x)
   (declare (xargs :guard (f x)))
   (car x)))

The use of :comp on stobj functions had potentially caused a hard Lisp error; for example, this could occur when (defstobj foo fld) was followed by :comp foop. This has been fixed.

Fixed a bug that could cause a raw Lisp error when the first argument of with-local-stobj is not a symbol.

It had been possible to use the reserved keyword :computed-hints-replacement as the name of a custom keyword hint (see custom-keyword-hints). This has been fixed. Thanks to Dave Greve, who pointed out a confusing hint error message (which has also been fixed) that led us to this issue.

Fixed a bug that could cause a hard Lisp error, instead of a graceful ACL2 error, if keyword :backchain-limit-lst in a rule class is given a cons that is not a true list, such as (1 . 1).

Eliminated an error that could occur when redefining a function as a macro and then compiling, as in the example below.

(defun foo (x) x)
:redef!
(defmacro foo (x) x)
:comp t

Thanks to Eric Smith for sending the above example in his bug report.

Fixed a bug that could result in an assertion when a clause-processor causes an error.

NEW AND UPDATED BOOKS AND RELATED INFRASTRUCTURE

See the log entries for a record of books changed or added since the preceding release, with log entries.

We note in particular the new system/ directory, which begins to specify ACL2 system code in anticipation of opening the architecture of ACL2 (see defattach for a relevant tool). Some system functions were changed slightly (but with the expectation of not generally affecting ACL2 behavior) in support of the development of this directory. Those interested in contributing to further such efforts are invited to contact the ACL2 implementors.

New utilities have been provided for certifying most of the distributed books with more `make'-level parallelism. For example, we have obtained close to a 12x reduction in time by using `make -j 24 regression-fast' on a 24-processor machine. For more information see books/make-targets, or to include the books/workshops in the regression run, see books/regression-targets. Thanks to Sol Swords for providing these nice utilities.

The top-level makefile, GNUmakefile, has been fixed so that the build processes (which are inherently sequential) will ignore the -j option of `make'. Note that regressions can still, however, be done in parallel, as the -j option will be passed automatically to the appropriate `make' command.

EMACS SUPPORT

EXPERIMENTAL VERSIONS

The HONS version, supported primarily by Bob Boyer and Warren Hunt (see hons-and-memoization), has undergone numerous improvements. For example, keyword argument :FORGET is now supported when calling memoize from within the ACL2 loop, and system function worse-than is memoized with the :condition that both terms are function applications (clearing the memo-table after each prover invocation). Thanks to Jared Davis and Sol Swords for investigating the memoization of worse-than, and with suitable condition. Thanks also to Jared Davis for contributing structural modifications to the implementation of hons.

David Rager contributed modifications to the parallel version (see parallelism), which include taking advantage of atomic increments available at least since Version 1.0.21 of SBCL and Version 1.3 of CCL.

Subtopics

Note-4-0-wormhole-changes: How to convert calls of wormhole for Version 4.0