Identification of vacuous predicates in computer programs

摘要

A computer system identifies a predicate in a computer language containing constant expressions as vacuous. The system identifies distinct variables contained in the predicate and represents the predicate by a set of bounding rectangles. The bounding rectangles are represented in a space having a number of dimensions equal to the number of variables. There are finite limits on dimensions of a bounding rectangle which represent the relationship between the variables in the predicate and the constant expressions in the predicate. The predicate is identified as vacuously FALSE where the set of bounding rectangles is empty.