Need help in understading the counter example - z3

Can somebody please explain why I am getting a counter example with this py code.
a = Int('a')
def X(a):
if (a == 3):
return 1
else:
return 2
z3.prove( X(a) == If (a == 3, 1, 2) )
counterexample
[a = 3]

Your function 'X' will always return '2' for all symbolic variables. That is:
from z3 import *
a = Int('a')
def X(a):
if (a == 3):
return 1
else:
return 2
print X(a)
will always print:
2
This is precisely why Z3 provides the If function. Python's 'if' does not work for symbolic values and the tests will simply take the else branch.
Aside:
I'd call this a weakness of the Python interface to Z3, since it's really weakly typed. Ideally, this program should be rejected because of the illegal use of if-then-else, but Python isn't a sufficiently strongly-typed language to give you that level of safety. Bindings to Z3 from other languages would reject the equivalent expression as type incorrect at compile time.

X(.) is a Python function, not a logical or Z3 function. It is evaluated when it is called. This means that the value of X(a) in
z3.prove( X(a) == If (a == 3, 1, 2) )
is determined to be 2 before z3.prove is called, because a is an Int('a') (and not 3). In this particular case, it's easy to debug such problems by simply printing the Z3 expressions, e.g.
print( X(a) == If (a == 3, 1, 2) )
reports
If(a == 3, 1, 2) == 2

Related

Why does the short_cur evaluation fail to work when using its value to preform arithmetic?[Lua]

I was trying to writing following code to perform arithmetic on short_cur evaluation expression
print(1 + (true or false) and 1 or 0)
while the interpreter said that I got a attempt to perform arithmetic on a boolean value Error.
AFAIK in lua when I write down the code a and b or c it actually gets the value depending the value of a(while b is not false), so the code above shall work as if print(1 + 1) under this cicumstances.
However the result does not seems to fit my expectation. I wonder why would this happen? Thanks for help!
According to Lua's operator precedence, the + is evaluated before the and. Your expression needs an extra pair of parenthesis: 1 + ((true or false) and 1 or 0).

2^65 modulo 101 incorrect anwser

This code checks that the value a maps uniquely for the values 1 to 100 using the formula (a^x) % 101
local function f(a)
found = {}
bijective = true
for x = 1, 100 do
value = (a^x) % 101
if found[value] then
bijective = false
break
else
found[value] = x
end
end
return bijective
end
However does not produce the expected result.
it maps 2^65 % 101 to 56, which matches the value produced by 2^12 % 101 and I get a false result, however the correct value for 2^65 % 101 is 57 and 2 actually should produce all unique values resulting in a true result.
The error described above is specifically on Lua 5.1, is this just a quirk of Lua's number typing? Is there a way to make this function work correctly in 5.1?
The error described above is specifically on Lua 5.1, is this just a quirk of Lua's number typing? Is there a way to make this function work correctly in 5.1?
First of all, this is not an issue with Lua's number typing since 2^65, being a (rather small) power of two, can be represented exactly by the double precision since it uses an exponent-mantissa representation. The mantissa can simply be set to all zeroes (leading one is implicit) and the exponent must be set to 65 (+ offset).
I tried this on different Lua versions and PUC Lua 5.1 & 5.2 as well as LuaJIT have the issue; Lua 5.3 (and presumably later versions as well) are fine. Interestingly, using math.fmod(2^65, 101) returns the correct result on the older Lua versions but 2^65 % 101 does not (it returns 0 instead).
This surprised me so I dug in the Lua 5.1 sources. This is the implementation of math.fmod:
#include <math.h>
...
static int math_fmod (lua_State *L) {
lua_pushnumber(L, fmod(luaL_checknumber(L, 1), luaL_checknumber(L, 2)));
return 1;
}
this also is the only place where fmod from math.h appears to be used. The % operator on the other hand is implemented as documented in the reference manual:
#define luai_nummod(a,b) ((a) - floor((a)/(b))*(b))
in src/luaconf.h. You could trivially redefine it as fmod(a,b) to fix your issue. In fact Lua 5.4 does something similar and even provides an elaborate explanation in its sources!
/*
** modulo: defined as 'a - floor(a/b)*b'; the direct computation
** using this definition has several problems with rounding errors,
** so it is better to use 'fmod'. 'fmod' gives the result of
** 'a - trunc(a/b)*b', and therefore must be corrected when
** 'trunc(a/b) ~= floor(a/b)'. That happens when the division has a
** non-integer negative result: non-integer result is equivalent to
** a non-zero remainder 'm'; negative result is equivalent to 'a' and
** 'b' with different signs, or 'm' and 'b' with different signs
** (as the result 'm' of 'fmod' has the same sign of 'a').
*/
#if !defined(luai_nummod)
#define luai_nummod(L,a,b,m) \
{ (void)L; (m) = l_mathop(fmod)(a,b); \
if (((m) > 0) ? (b) < 0 : ((m) < 0 && (b) > 0)) (m) += (b); }
#endif
Is there a way to make this function work correctly in 5.1?
Yes: The easy way is to use fmod. This may work for these particular numbers since they still fit in doubles due to the base being 2 and the exponent being moderately small, but it won't work in the general case. The better approach is to leverage modular arithmetics to keep your intermediate results small, never storing numbers significantly larger than 101^2 since (a * b) % c == (a % c) * (b % c).
local function f(a)
found = {}
bijective = true
local value = 1
for _ = 1, 100 do
value = (value * a) % 101 -- a^x % 101
if found[value] then
bijective = false
break
else
found[value] = x
end
end
return bijective
end

Testing that a constant matches an interval

Given the following simple example:
s = Solver()
Z = IntSort()
a = Const('a', Z)
s.add(a >= 0)
s.add(a < 10)
print(s.check(a > 5)) # sat
Up until the last line, a has an implied range of 0 <= a < 10 - for which a > 5 does not satisfy. However, .check() tells z3 that "this is true" - which is not what I'm after.
Is there a way to ask z3 to test if a > 5 given the existing set of constraints, and have z3 interpret this as "make sure this is true given everything else we know about a"?
EDIT: Okay I think I figured it out. Since z3 tries to find a model that satisfies all constraints, I should instead check for the inverse to see if it finds a solution - in which case, my check would not hold.
In this case, my "test" function would become:
def test(s, expr):
return s.check(Not(expr)) == unsat
thus...
s = Solver()
Z = IntSort()
a = Const('a', Z)
s.add(a >= 0)
s.add(a < 10)
print(s.check(a > 5)) # sat
print(s.check(Not(a > 5)) == unsat) # false, test failed
s.add(a > 8)
print(s.check(Not(a > 5)) == unsat) # true, test passed
Is that correct?
What you are doing is essentially correct, though not idiomatic. When you issue s.check(formula), you're telling z3 to show the satisfiability of all the other constraints you add'ed, along with formula; i.e., their conjunction. So, the way you set it up, it gives you the correct result.
Here's some more detail. Since what you want to prove looks like:
Implies(And(lower, upper), required)
the typical way of doing this would be to assert its negation, and then check if it is satisfiable. That is, you'd check if:
Not(Implies(And(lower, upper), required))
is satisfiable. Recall that Implies(a, b) is equivalent to Or(Not(a), b), so a little bit of Boolean logic transforms the above to:
And(And(lower, upper), Not(required))
What you are doing is to add the first conjunct above (i.e., And(lower, upper)) to the solver itself, and then use the second conjunct Not(required) as an argument to check to see if you get unsat. If you do, then you get a "proof" that required always holds. Otherwise you get a counterexample.
I should add, however, that this is not idiomatic usage of z3py and calls to check with a formula. The latter is usually used with a list of assumptions, and figuring out which subset of them was unsatisfiable with a call to get-unsat-assumptions. These applications typically come from model-checking problems. For details, see Section 4.2.5 of https://smtlib.cs.uiowa.edu/papers/smt-lib-reference-v2.6-r2021-05-12.pdf which discusses the semantics of check-sat-assuming, which is the SMTLib equivalent of calling check with extra assumptions.
To solve your problem in more idiomatic z3, one would instead write something like:
from z3 import *
s = Solver()
a = Int('a')
lower = a >= 0
upper = a < 10
required = a > 5
formula = Implies(And(lower, upper), required)
# assert the negation
s.add(Not(formula))
r = s.check()
if r == sat:
print("Not valid, counterexample:")
print(s.model())
elif r == unsat:
print("Valid!")
else:
print("Solver said:", r)
This prints:
Not valid, counterexample:
[a = 0]
And if you change to lower = a >= 8, it'll print:
Valid!
Bottom line, what you're doing is correct but not very idiomatic usage for check-sat-assuming. A simpler way is to simply assert the negation of the implication that your lower/upper bounds imply the required inequality and check if the result is unsat instead.

What is the most efficient way of checking N-way equation equivalence in Z3?

Suppose I have a set of Z3 expressions:
exprs = [A, B, C, D, E, F]
I want to check whether any of them are equivalent and, if so, determine which. The most obvious way is just an N×N comparison (assume exprs is composed of some arbitrarily-complicated boolean expressions instead of the simple numbers in the example):
from z3 import *
exprs = [IntVal(1), IntVal(2), IntVal(3), IntVal(4), IntVal(3)]
for i in range(len(exprs) - 1):
for j in range(i+1, len(exprs)):
s = Solver()
s.add(exprs[i] != exprs[j])
if unsat == s.check():
quit(f'{(i, j)} are equivalent')
Is this the most efficient method, or is there some way of quantifying over a set of arbitrary expressions? It would also be acceptable for this to be a two-step process where I first learn whether any of the expressions are equivalent, and then do a longer check to see which specific expressions are equivalent.
As with anything performance related, the answer is "it depends." Before delving into options, though, note that z3 supports Distinct, which can check whether any number of expressions are all different: https://z3prover.github.io/api/html/namespacez3py.html#a9eae89dd394c71948e36b5b01a7f3cd0
Though of course, you've a more complicated query here. I think the following two algorithms are your options:
Explicit pairwise checks
Depending on your constraints, the simplest thing to do might be to call the solver multiple times, as you alluded to. To start with, use Distinct and make a call to see if its negation is satisfiable. (i.e., check if some of these expressions can be made equal.) If the answer comes unsat, you know you can't make any equal. Otherwise, go with your loop as before till you hit the pair that can be made equal to each other.
Doing multiple checks together
You can also solve your problem using a modified algorithm, though with more complicated constraints, and hopefully faster.
To do so, create Nx(N-1)/2 booleans, one for each pair, which is equal to that pair not being equivalent. To illustrate, let's say you have the expressions A, B, and C. Create:
X0 = A != B
X1 = A != C
X2 = B != C
Now loop:
Ask if X0 || X1 || X2 is satisfiable.
If the solver comes back unsat, then all of A, B, and C are equivalent. You're done.
If the solver comes back sat, then at least one of the disjuncts X0, X1 or X2 is true. Use the model the solver gives you to determine which ones are false, and continue with those until you get unsat.
Here's a simple concrete example. Let's say the expressions are {1, 1, 2}:
Ask if 1 != 1 || 1 != 2 || 1 != 2 is sat.
It'll be sat. In the model, you'll have at least one of these disjuncts true, and it won't be the first one! In this case the last two. Drop them from your list, leaving you with 1 != 1.
Ask again if 1 != 1 is satisfiable. The answer will be unsat and you're done.
In the worst case you'll make Nx(N-1)/2 calls to the solver, if it happens that none of them can be made equivalent with you eliminating one at a time. This is where the first call to Not (Distinct(A, B, C, ...)) is important; i.e., you will start knowing that some pair is equivalent; hopefully iterating faster.
Summary
My initial hunch is that the second algorithm above will be more performant; though it really depends on what your expressions really look like. I suggest some experimentation to find out what works the best in your particular case.
A Python solution
Here's the algorithm coded:
from z3 import *
exprs = [IntVal(i) for i in [1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 10, 10, 1]]
s = Solver()
bools = []
for i in range(len(exprs) - 1):
for j in range(i+1, len(exprs)):
b = Bool(f'eq_{i}_{j}')
bools.append(b)
s.add(b == (exprs[i] != exprs[j]))
# First check if they're all distinct
s.push()
s.add(Not(Distinct(*exprs)))
if(s.check()== unsat):
quit("They're all distinct")
s.pop()
while True:
# Be defensive, bools should not ever become empty here.
if not bools:
quit("This shouldn't have happened! Something is wrong.")
if s.check(Or(*bools)) == unsat:
print("Equivalent expressions:")
for b in bools:
print(f' {b}')
quit('Done')
else:
# Use the model to keep bools that are false:
m = s.model()
bools = [b for b in bools if not(m.evaluate(b, model_completion=True))]
This prints:
Equivalent expressions:
eq_0_8
eq_1_5
eq_2_4
eq_6_7
Done
which looks correct to me! Note that this should work correctly even if you have 3 (or more) items that are equivalent; of course you'll see the output one-pair at a time. So, some post-processing might be needed to clean that up, depending on the needs of the upstream algorithm.
Note that I only tested this for a few test values; there might be corner case gotchas. Please do a more thorough test and report if there're any bugs!

Variable declaration that I don't understand in Lua

I was reading some Lua and doing a little course to use it with Löve 2D, in an example they give declare a variable this way, which I honestly do not understand:
ballDX = math.random(2) == 1 and 100 or -100
I've tried to google and read a bit but haven't found a place to specifically explain that. Looking at what it says I identify the obvious, BallDX is equal to a random number between 1 and 2, but from there I get quite confused, what does it mean that the random number is equal to 1 and 100 or -100?
This is a kinda interesting Lua concept
The operator and returns its first argument if it is false; otherwise, it returns its second argument.
The operator or returns its first argument if it is not false; otherwise, it returns its second argument
In this case math.random(2) == 1 and 100 or -100 behaves exactly like a ternary operator, it can translate to:
If math.random(2) equals to 1, set ballDX = 100, otherwise set ballDX = -100
For example, assume you had a variable called c, and you want to assign it a value only if a variable is above 10, with a ternary operator you would do this: c = a > 10 ? a : b
In Lua you would use c = a > 10 and a or b

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