Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) are an intermediate program representation that can be generated by several verification tools, and that can be processed and solved by a number of Horn solvers. One of the main challenges when using CHCs in verification is the encoding of heap-allocated data-structures: such data-structures are today either represented explicitly using the theory of arrays, or transformed away with the help of invariants or refinement types, defeating the purpose of CHCs as a representation that is language-independent as well as agnostic of the algorithm implemented by the Horn solver. This paper presents an SMT-LIB theory of heap tailored to CHCs, with the goal of enabling a standard interchange format for programs with heap data-structures. We introduce the syntax of the theory of heap, define its semantics in terms of axioms and using a reduction to SMT-LIB arrays and data-types, and discuss its properties and outline possible extensions and future work.

中文翻译：

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约束号角子句的堆理论（扩展技术报告）

约束Horn子句（CHC）是可以由多个验证工具生成的中间程序表示形式，并且可以由许多Horn求解器进行处理和求解。使用CHC进行验证时的主要挑战之一是对堆分配的数据结构进行编码：如今，这些数据结构要么使用数组理论进行了明确表示，要么借助不变式或优化类型进行了转换，从而克服了CHC的目的是作为独立于语言的表示形式，并且与Horn求解器实现的算法无关。本文介绍了一种为CHC量身定制的SMT-LIB堆理论，其目标是为具有堆数据结构的程序启用标准交换格式。我们介绍堆理论的语法，