Strategy synthesis for linear arithmetic games

• Published in: Proceedings of ACM on programming languages 2018-01, Vol.2 (POPL), p.1-30
• Main Authors: Farzan, Azadeh, Kincaid, Zachary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2475-1421; 2475-1421
• DOI: 10.1145/3158149

Many problems in formal methods can be formalized as two-player games. For several applications—program synthesis, for example—in addition to determining which player wins the game, we are interested in computing a winning strategy for that player. This paper studies the strategy synthesis problem for games defined within the theory of linear rational arithmetic. Two types of games are considered. A satisfiability game , described by a quantified formula, is played by two players that take turns instantiating quantifiers. The objective of each player is to prove (or disprove) satisfiability of the formula. A reachability game , described by a pair of formulas defining the legal moves of each player, is played by two players that take turns choosing positions—rational vectors of some fixed dimension. The objective of each player is to reach a position where the opposing player has no legal moves (or to play the game forever). We give a complete algorithm for synthesizing winning strategies for satisfiability games and a sound (but necessarily incomplete) algorithm for synthesizing winning strategies for reachability games.