The superposition calculus, which underlies first-order theorem provers such as E, SPASS, and Vampire, combines ordered resolution and equality reasoning. As a step towards verifying modern provers, we specify, using Isabelle/HOL, a purely functional first-order ordered resolution prover and establish its soundness and refutational completeness. Methodologically, we apply stepwise refinement to obtain, from an abstract nondeterministic specification, a verified deterministic program, written in a subset of Isabelle/HOL from which we extract purely functional Standard ML code that constitutes a semidecision procedure for first-order logic.
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