A grammatical representation of visibly pushdown languages

Abstract

Model-checking regular properties is well established and a powerful verification technique for regular as well as context-free program behaviours. Recently, through the use of ω-visibly pushdown languages (ωVPLs), defined by ω-visibly pushdown automata, model-checking of properties beyond regular expressiveness was made possible and shown to be still decidable even when the program's model of behaviour is an ωVPL. In this paper, we give a grammatical representation of ωVPLs and the corresponding finite word languages - VPL. From a specification viewpoint, the grammatical representation provides a more natural representation than the automata approach. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.