---
title: "Symbolic Execution of the Gist Specification Language"
authors:
  - "Donald Cohen"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/3"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1983/0003.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1983
pages: "17-19"
track: "Automatic Programming"
keywords:
---

# Symbolic Execution of the Gist Specification Language

Donald Cohen

*Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 17-19.

## Abstract

Symbolic execution can help clarify the behavior implied by a program specification without implementing that specification , and can thereby assist the difficult process of developing a correct specification. However, symbolic execution of specifications poses problems that do not arise in symbolic execution of ordinary programming languages. We describe a symbolic evaluator, named KOK0 2, for the Gist specification language, and show how it copes with such high-level constructs as nondeterminism , constraints, and reference by description.