The Boogie intermediate verification language

The Boogie IVL (intermediate verification language) is a simple language designed for verification which was originally created by Microsoft Research.

The language is an “intermediate language” because it is designed to be the middle part of a program verifier. A front-end translates a program written in some language to the Boogie IVL and a back-end tries to verify the translated program. This provides “separation of concerns” as

  • The front-end does need to care about what method is used to verify the program.
  • The back-end does not need to care about the semantics of several different programming languages. It only needs to care about the Boogie IVL.

This idea is analogous to the “intermediate representation” (IR) used in modern compilers.

Front-ends that emit Boogie IVL

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