TRX: A Formally Verified Parser Interpreter

Abstract

Parsing is an important problem in computer science and yet surprisingly little attention has been devoted to its formal verification. In this paper, we present TRX: a parser interpreter formally developed in the proof assistant Coq, capable of producing formally correct parsers. We are using parsing expression grammars (PEGs), a formalism essentially representing recursive descent parsing, which we consider an attractive alternative to context-free grammars (CFGs). From this formalization we can extract a parser for an arbitrary PEG grammar with the warranty of total correctness, i.e., the resulting parser is terminating and correct with respect to its grammar and the semantics of PEGs; both properties formally proven in Coq.

Keywords

• computer science - logic in computer science
• computer science - formal languages and automata theory
• computer science - programming languages
• d.3.4, d.2.4, f.3.1, f.4.2