Is the Interesting Part of Process Logic Uninteresting - A Translation from PL to PDL

Abstract

With the (necessary) condition that atomic programs in PL be binary, we present an algorithm for the translation of a PL formula X into a PDL program τ (X) such that a finite path satisfies X iff it belongs to τ (X). This reduction has two immediate corollaries: 1) validity in this PL can be tested by testing validity of formulas in PDL; 2) all finite-path program properties expressible in this PL are expressible in PDL.The translation, however, seems to be of non-elementary time complexity. The significance of the result to the search for natural and powerful logics of programs is discussed.