My high-school daughter finds it hard to understand why there are the same amount of even numbers as the nature numbers...Also, why "0.99999...." equal to 1. Because: too much...:-)On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 10:04 AM Leslie Lamport <tlapl...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Fairness is probably the part of TLA+ that most people find hardest tounderstand. This is not a problem with TLA+. Most other formalismsdon't have this problem because they simply can't express the kind offairness that you need. The fundamental reason fairness, and livenessin general, are hard to understand is that they are properties ofinfinite behaviors, and people have trouble understanding theinfinite. For example, their minds are usually blown by "Hilbert'shotel", which is always full but always has room for another guestbecause it has an infinite number of rooms. (You can look it up onthe web.)If you learn PlusCal and enough about TLA+ to understand how toexpress the fairness properties you will need, you should have notrouble learning to write TLA+ specs. You will then have the freedomto use either PlusCal or TLA+, whichever is best for an application.You can also use PlusCal together with TLA+ specifications offairness. You can write a PlusCal algorithm with no fairnessrequirements, which will be translated to a specification named Spec.You can then add, after the translation, the definitionFairSpec == Spec /\ some fairness conditionsand use FairSpec as your specification. (Don't modify the definitionof Spec because your modifications will disappear the next time yourun the translator.) You can also put some fairness conditions in thePlusCal code and put additional fairness conditions that can't beexpressed easily in PlusCal in the definition of FairSpec.Incidentally, you can always express any TLA+ fairness conditions inPlusCal. However, this often requires changing the process structureof the PlusCal code. In your example, that can be done by replacingthe process that executes either branch1 or branch2 with twoprocesses: one that executes branch1 and one that executes branch2.When you understand TLA+, you will understand that processes are notinherent in an algorithm but represent a particular way of writing theTLA+ formula that is the algorithm.
Leslie--On Tuesday, July 6, 2021 at 9:13:48 AM UTC-7 hwa...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:IMO needing to put fairness on a non-deterministic decision is one of the points where you should be considering switching to TLA+ over using PlusCal.
H
On 7/6/2021 1:34 AM, Stephan Merz wrote:
Hello,
requiring strong fairness for the branch1 action won't help because the non-deterministic decision of which branch to enter is taken earlier (at the "either" statement labeled "example"). This is one of the cases where the intended fairness condition has to be expressed in TLA+. You probably want to write something like
/\ SF_vars(example /\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "branch1"])/\ SF_vars(example /\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "branch2"])
in order to express that both branches will be taken infinitely often if execution arrives infinitely often at the "either" statement.
Hope this helps,Stephan--
On 1 Jul 2021, at 14:53, p.to...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <p.to...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all, i don't know how to use the either statement in pluscal with fairness condition on the options of the either or statement. I have tried the following example with a label for each option of the statement but it doesn't seems to work:
begin example:
while TRUE do
either
branch1:
set := {1};
or
branch2:
set := {2};
end either;
later:
skip;
end while;
and the formula prop2 == <>(set={1}) doesn't hold true, the system cycle over all branch2 options. I have tried to add the fairness in the tla translated specification putting an /\ SF_vars(branch1) but the problem persists, here is the tla+ translation from pluscal:
VARIABLES set, pc
(* define statement *)
prop2 == <>(set={1})
vars == << set, pc >>
ProcSet == {"test"}
Init == (* Global variables *)
/\ set = {}
/\ pc = [self \in ProcSet |-> "example"]
example == /\ pc["test"] = "example"
/\ \/ /\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "branch1"]
\/ /\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "branch2"]
/\ set' = set
later == /\ pc["test"] = "later"
/\ TRUE
/\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "example"]
/\ set' = set
branch1 == /\ pc["test"] = "branch1"
/\ set' = {1}
/\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "later"]
branch2 == /\ pc["test"] = "branch2"
/\ set' = {2}
/\ pc' = [pc EXCEPT !["test"] = "later"]
test == example \/ later \/ branch1 \/ branch2
Next == test
Spec == /\ Init /\ [][Next]_vars
/\ WF_vars(Next)
/\ SF_vars(test)
/\ SF_vars(branch1)
someone can help? thanks
--
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