Completeness of Iris-Based Program Logics

Traditionally, proof systems such as program logics come with two core theorems: soundness and completeness . The role of soundness is obvious: we want to be sure that arguments carried out inside the logic actually lead to correct conclusions. Completeness complements that by ensuring that the logic does not limit expressivity: in principle, any correct result can be obtained within the confines of the logic. This result typically has to be stated relative to the completeness of the assertion logic that is used to reason about pre- and postconditions. Over the past decade, the Iris framework has emerged as a widely used foundation for building separation logics. While Iris-based logics typically come with a soundness proof, none of them have had a proof of completeness. In this paper, we present the first approach for establishing completeness of Iris-based program logics, and we show the generality of our methodology by applying it to a range of different logics described in prior work, including partial and total concurrent separation logics for a higher-order ML-like language, two quantitative logics (for bounding execution time and probabilistic errors), and a relational logic for proving refinement. All our results have been mechanized in the Rocq prover.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Published
2026-08-17
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3828682
Primary Topic
Logic, programming, and type systems
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Completeness of Iris-Based Program Logics

Johannes Hostert, Ralf Jung, Joseph Tassarotti, Simon Oddershede Gregersen et al.
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Logic, programming, and type systems
article

Completeness of Iris-Based Program Logics

Johannes Hostert, Ralf Jung, Joseph Tassarotti, Simon Oddershede Gregersen, Puming Liu, Zichen Zhang
article en

Abstract

Traditionally, proof systems such as program logics come with two core theorems: soundness and completeness . The role of soundness is obvious: we want to be sure that arguments carried out inside the logic actually lead to correct conclusions. Completeness complements that by ensuring that the logic does not limit expressivity: in principle, any correct result can be obtained within the confines of the logic. This result typically has to be stated relative to the completeness of the assertion logic that is used to reason about pre- and postconditions. Over the past decade, the Iris framework has emerged as a widely used foundation for building separation logics. While Iris-based logics typically come with a soundness proof, none of them have had a proof of completeness. In this paper, we present the first approach for establishing completeness of Iris-based program logics, and we show the generality of our methodology by applying it to a range of different logics described in prior work, including partial and total concurrent separation logics for a higher-order ML-like language, two quantitative logics (for bounding execution time and probabilistic errors), and a relational logic for proving refinement. All our results have been mechanized in the Rocq prover.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming LanguagesVol. 10(ICFP)
New York University Shanghai (CN), ETH Zurich (CH), Helmholtz Center for Information Security (DE), New York University (US)
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 7%
Logic, programming, and type systems
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