Static correction of Maude programs with assertions

In this paper, we present a novel transformation method for Maude programs featuring both automatic program diagnosis and correction. The input of our method is a reference specification A of the program behavior that is given in the form of assertions together with an overly general program R whose execution might violate the assertions. Our correction technique translates R into a refined program R' in which every computation is also a computation in R that satisfies the assertions of A. The technique is first formalized for topmost rewrite theories, and then we generalize it to larger classes of rewrite theories that support nested structured configurations. Our technique copes with infinite space states and does not require the knowledge of any failing run. We report experiments that assess the effectiveness of assertion-driven correction.