A Proof System for Communicating Sequential Processes

Abstract

An axiomatic proof system is presented for proving partial correctness and absence of deadlock (and failure) of communicating sequential processes. The key (meta) rule introduces cooperation between proofs, a new concept needed to deal with proofs about synchronization by message passing. CSP's new convention for distributed termination of loops is dealt with. Applications of the method involve correctness proofs for two algorithms, one for distributed partitioning of sets, the other for distributed computation of the greatest common divisor of n numbers.