A Generic Tableau Prover and its Integration with Isabelle

A generic tableau prover has been implemented and integrated with Isabelle [Paulson, 1994]. Compared with classical rst-order logic provers, it has numerous extensions that allow it to reason with any supplied set of tableau rules. It has a higherorder syntax in order to support user-de ned binding operators, such as those of set theory. The uni cation algorithm is rst-order instead of higher-order, but it includes modi cations to handle bound variables. The proof, when found, is returned to Isabelle as a list of tactics. Because Isabelle veri es the proof, the prover can cut corners for e ciency's sake without compromising soundness. For example, the prover can use type information to guide the search without storing type information in full. Categories: F.4, I.1