doc/cvc4.1_template.in

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   4 .TH CVC4 1 "@MAN_DATE@" "CVC4 release @VERSION@" "User Manuals"
   5 .SH NAME
   6 cvc4, pcvc4 \- an automated theorem prover
   7 .SH SYNOPSIS
   8 .B cvc4 [
   9 .I options
  10 .B ] [
  11 .I file
  12 .B ]
  13 .P
  14 .B pcvc4 [
  15 .I options
  16 .B ] [
  17 .I file
  18 .B ]
  19 .SH DESCRIPTION
  20 .B cvc4
  21 is an automated theorem prover for first-order formulas with respect
  22 to background theories of interest.
  23 .B pcvc4
  24 is CVC4's "portfolio" variant, which is capable of running multiple
  25 CVC4 instances in parallel, configured differently.
  26
  27 With
  28 .I file
  29 , commands are read from
  30 .I file
  31 and executed.  CVC4 supports the SMT-LIB (versions 1.2 and 2.0) input
  32 format, as well as its own native \(lqpresentation language\(rq (see
  33 .BR cvc4 (5)
  34 ), which is similar in many respects to CVC3's presentation language,
  35 but not identical.
  36
  37 If
  38 .I file
  39 is unspecified, standard input is read (and the
  40 .B CVC4
  41 presentation language is assumed).  If
  42 .I file
  43 is unspecified and
  44 .B CVC4
  45 is connected to a terminal, interactive mode is assumed.
  46
  47 .SH COMMON OPTIONS
  48
  49 .IP "Each option marked with [*] has a --no-OPTIONNAME variant, which reverses the sense of the option."
  50
  51 ${common_manpage_documentation}
  52
  53 ${remaining_manpage_documentation}
  54
  55 .IP "Each option marked with [*] has a --no-OPTIONNAME variant, which reverses the sense of the option."
  56
  57 .\".SH FILES
  58 .\".SH ENVIRONMENT
  59 .SH DIAGNOSTICS
  60 .B CVC4
  61 reports all syntactic and semantic errors on standard error.
  62 .SH HISTORY
  63 The
  64 .B CVC4
  65 effort is the culmination of fifteen years of theorem proving
  66 research, starting with the
  67 .I Stanford Validity Checker (SVC)
  68 in 1996.
  69
  70 SVC's successor, the
  71 .I Cooperating Validity Checker (CVC),
  72 had a more optimized internal design, produced proofs, used the
  73 .I Chaff
  74 SAT solver, and featured a number of usability
  75 enhancements.  Its name comes from the cooperative nature of
  76 decision procedures in Nelson-Oppen theory combination,
  77 which share amongst each other equalities between shared terms.
  78
  79 CVC Lite, first made available in 2003, was a rewrite of CVC
  80 that attempted to make CVC
  81 more flexible (hence the \(lqlite\(rq) while extending the feature set:
  82 CVCLite supported quantifiers where its predecessors did not.
  83 CVC3 was a major overhaul of portions of CVC Lite: it added
  84 better decision procedure implementations, added support for using
  85 MiniSat in the core, and had generally better performance.
  86
  87 CVC4 is the new version, the fifth generation of this validity
  88 checker line that is now celebrating fifteen years of heritage.
  89 It represents a complete re-evaluation of
  90 the core architecture to be both performant and to serve as a cutting-edge research vehicle
  91 for the next several years.  Rather than taking CVC3
  92 and redesigning problem parts, we've taken a clean-room approach,
  93 starting from scratch.  Before using any designs from CVC3, we have
  94 thoroughly scrutinized, vetted, and updated them.  Many parts of CVC4
  95 bear only a superficial resemblance, if any, to their correspondent in CVC3.
  96
  97 However, CVC4 is fundamentally similar to CVC3 and many other
  98 modern SMT solvers: it is a DPLL(
  99 .I T
 100 ) solver,
 101 with a SAT solver at its core and a delegation path to different decision
 102 procedure implementations, each in charge of solving formulas in some
 103 background theory.
 104
 105 The re-evaluation and ground-up rewrite was necessitated, we felt, by
 106 the performance characteristics of CVC3.  CVC3 has many useful
 107 features, but some core aspects of the design led to high memory use, and
 108 the use of heavyweight computation (where more nimble engineering
 109 approaches could suffice) makes CVC3 a much slower prover than other tools.
 110 As these designs are central to CVC3, a new version was preferable to a
 111 selective re-engineering, which would have ballooned in short order.
 112 .SH VERSION
 113 This manual page refers to
 114 .B CVC4
 115 version @VERSION@.
 116 .SH BUGS
 117 A Bugzilla for the CVC4 project is maintained at
 118 .BR http://cvc4.cs.nyu.edu/bugzilla3/ .
 119 .SH AUTHORS
 120 .B CVC4
 121 is developed by a team of researchers at New York University
 122 and the University of Iowa.
 123 See the AUTHORS file in the distribution for a full list of
 124 contributors.
 125 .SH "SEE ALSO"
 126 .BR libcvc4 (3),
 127 .BR libcvc4parser (3),
 128 .BR libcvc4compat (3)
 129
 130 Additionally, the CVC4 wiki contains useful information about the
 131 design and internals of CVC4.  It is maintained at
 132 .BR http://cvc4.cs.nyu.edu/wiki/ .