Summary: This is a preprint of a paper to appear in the Proceedings of the
Seventeenth Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, to
be held July 22­25, 2002 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Copyright 2002 IEEE.
Separation Logic: A Logic for Shared Mutable Data Structures
John C. Reynolds 
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University
john.reynolds@cs.cmu.edu
Abstract
In joint work with Peter O'Hearn and others, based on
early ideas of Burstall, we have developed an extension of
Hoare logic that permits reasoning about low­level impera­
tive programs that use shared mutable data structure.
The simple imperative programming language is ex­
tended with commands (not expressions) for accessing and
modifying shared structures, and for explicit allocation and
deallocation of storage. Assertions are extended by intro­
ducing a ``separating conjunction'' that asserts that its sub­
formulas hold for disjoint parts of the heap, and a closely
related ``separating implication''. Coupled with the induc­

Source: Andrews, Peter B. - Department of Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University
Reynolds, John C. - School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Zdancewic, Steve - Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences; Mathematics