Abstract:
We propose the class of visibly pushdown languages as embeddings of context-free languages that is rich enough to model program analysis questions and yet is tractable and robust like the class of regular languages. In our denition, the input symbol determines when the pushdown automaton can push or pop, and thus the stack depth at every position. We show that the resulting class ## # of languages is closed under union, intersection, complementation, renaming, concatenation, and Kleene-#, and problems such as inclusion that are undecidable for context-free languages are #######-complete for visibly pushdown automata. Our framework explains, unies, and generalizes many of the decision procedures in the program analysis literature, and allows algorithmic veri cation of recursive programs with respect to many context-free properties including access control properties via stack inspection and correctness of procedures with respect to pre and post conditions. We demonstrate that the class ## # is robust by giving two alternative characterizations: a logical characterization using the monadic second order (MSO) theory over words augmented with a binary matching predicate, and a correspondence to regular tree languages. We also consider visibly pushdown languages of innite words and show that the closure properties, MSO-characterization and the characterization in terms of regular trees carry over. The main difference with respect to the case of nite words turns out to be determinizability: nondeterministic Buchi visibly pushdown automata are strictly more expressive than deterministic Muller automata.
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