NOTE-3-7

Major Section:  RELEASE-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 hons-and-memoization version. 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

The ACL2 tutorial has, we think, been considerably improved. 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. On a related note, 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, :definition, or :linear.

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.

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.

For keyword argument :load-compiled-file of include-book, the value :comp-raw is no longer legal. Its handling was broken; so it seems that this value wasn't actually used by anyone.

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

NEW FEATURES

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.

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)))

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-3-7 ...).

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).

Fixed a soundness bug related to xargs keyword :non-executable. a new macro, defun-nx, has 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, an 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), prevent 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.

Fixed bug that could cause Lisp error when value :comp! supplied for keyword argument :load-compiled-file of include-book, in some Lisp platforms including SBCL.

Fixed a bug in the interaction of make-event with calls of time$ that take keyword arguments. Thanks to Jared Davis for reporting this bug and sending the following example:

(time$ (make-event '(defun g (x) x))
       :msg "Defun g")

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.

NEW AND UPDATED BOOKS AND RELATED INFRASTRUCTURE

See http://code.google.com/p/acl2-books/wiki/BooksSince361 for a list of books not in Version 3.6.1. For changes to existing books rather than additions, see the log entries at http://code.google.com/p/acl2-books/source/list.

We note in particular the new system/ directory, which begins to specify ACL2 system code. Some system functions were changed slightly (but with the expectation of not generally affecting ACL2 behavior) in support of the development of this book.

New utilities have been provided for certifying most of the distributed books with more make-level paralellism. 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.

EMACS SUPPORT

EXPERIMENTAL VERSIONS

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

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.