README.md

Z3.jl

This is a Julia interface to Z3 - a high performance theorem prover developed at Microsoft Research. Z3 can solve satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) problems.

Install

Prerequisites: Have Z3 installed with shared libraries in your path.

Pkg.clone("[email protected]:zenna/Z3.jl.git")

Usage

using Z3.jl

using Z3
A = Var(Integer)    # Create an integer-valued variable
add!(A - 5 == 10)   # Add a constraint
check()             # Is this problem satisfiable?
model(Int, A)       # Return a value for A in type Int = i.e. 15

API Details

Z3.jl is a relatively lightweight wrapper. By this I mean there's mostly direct access to the C-API, and Z3.jl doesn't prevent Z3 from terminating your program if you use it incorrectly. There are some conveniences however. In particular:

Global Context

Building expressions (and pretty much everything else) in Z3 all take place within a context. Z3.jl provides a Context class which allows you to create a new Context

ctx = Context()
ctx = Context(qf_bv)  # context under quantifier free bitvector logic

All api functions which need a context (which again is most of them), take a ctx keyword parameter, e.g.:

ctx = Context()
A = Var(Integer; ctx=ctx)
B = Var(Integer; ctx=ctx)
C = (-)(A, B; ctx=ctx)

This can get quite cumbersome, and so for the common case where you just want to write down an expression, Z3.jl provides a default, globally defined context. You can access it with global_ctx().

Global Solver

Much like a global context, many operations (particularly those involved in adding and removing constraints) involve a solver. In Z3.jl solvers are created using the Solver type.

s = Solver() # Equivalently s = Solver(ctx=global_context())
A = Var(Real)
B = Var(Real)
add!(A == B; solver = s)
check(;solver = s)

Warning: Ensure you don't mix and match variables and assertions with different contexts and solvers or Z3 will probably crash. This is particularly easy to do with arithmetic operations and the global context. One way to ensure you are not usung the global context when you don't mean to is to call disable_global_context!() which will throw an error if you attempt to use it.

A plethora of types and api calls

Z3 has a large api with lots of function calls and lots of types. All of these can be found in wrap.jl. For documentation of what parts mean, check the Z3 C API documentation

For every c type we have a corresponding julia type. All of these types subtype Z3CType.

For instance in wrap.jl we have the definition:

@wrap function Z3_mk_eq(ctx::Z3_context,l::Z3_ast,r::Z3_ast)
    ccall((:Z3_mk_eq,"libz3"),Z3_ast,(Z3_context,Z3_ast,Z3_ast),ctx,l,r)
end

Note that Z3_ast is just a typealias alias Ptr{Void}. This is true for all types that begin with Z3. The corresponding julia type is Ast

The @wrap performs some creative metaprogramming to create a new function mk_eq (prefix Z3_ has been dropped) which will accept the julia types, and treats context arguments instead as keyword parameters, e.g:

# Return the expression l == r
function mk_eq(l::Ast, r::Ast; ctx::Context = global_context())
  ...
  return x::Ast
end

Which can be used more conveniently than dealing with the c pointers.

A = Var(Integer)
B = Var(Integer)
mk_eq(A, B)