CTL and equivalent sublanguages of CTL

Specifications of finite state algorithms with a complex temporal behavior such as protocols or hardware systems are often given in temporal logics as e.g. CTL or CTL*. On the one hand, CTL offers in comparison to CTL* efficient model checking algorithms, but on the other hand, CTL seems to suffer from a limited expressiveness. In this paper, it is shown that the limitations one feels when using CTL are often due to syntactical restrictions and not due to its limited expressiveness. Hence, a new sublanguage of CTL* is presented that has the same expressiveness as CTL, but less syntactical restrictions. Moreover, it is shown, how specifications written in this language can be translated into CTL to be verified by a standard model checker for CTL.

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