Equivalence proofs for Erlang refactoring

Abstract

Erlang is an actor-based programming language used extensively for building concurrent, reactive systems that are highlighly available and suffer minimum downtime. Such systems are often mission critical, making system correctness vital. In industrial-scale systems, correctness is usually ascertained through testing, a lightweight verification technique trading analysis completeness for scalability. In such cases, a system is deemed correct whenever it “passes” a suite of tests, each checking for the correct functionality of a particular aspect of a system. This is also true for large Erlang systems: even when correctness specifications are provided, it is commonplace for Erlang developers to use testing tools, automating test-case generation from these specifications.