Partial and Total Correctness
Standard Hoare logic proves only partial correctness, while termination needs to be proved separately. Thus the intuitive reading of a Hoare triple is: Whenever P holds of the state before the execution of C, then Q will hold afterwards, or C does not terminate. Note that if C does not terminate, then there is no "after", so Q can be any statement at all. Indeed, one can choose Q to be false to express that C does not terminate.
Total correctness can also be proven with an extended version of the While rule.
Read more about this topic: Hoare Logic
Famous quotes containing the words partial and, partial, total and/or correctness:
“There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind only if he arrives there in full possession of his partial faculties—that is, providing he is perfectly aware of the precise nature of sight and does not confuse it with second sight ... nor with madness.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“I find myself ... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)