What is "temporal logic"

n. A form of symbolic logic used to reason about property of statements related to order and duration.

In logic, temporal logic is any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time. In a temporal logic we can then express statements like "I am always hungry", "I will eventually be hungry", or "I will be hungry until I eat something". Temporal logic is sometimes also used to refer to tense logic, a particular modal logic-based system of temporal logic introduced by Arthur Prior in the late 1950s, and important results were obtained by Hans Kamp. Subsequently it has been developed further by computer scientists, notably Amir Pnueli, and logicians.

Temporal logic has found an important application in formal verification, where it is used to state requirements of hardware or software systems. For instance, one may wish to say that whenever a request is made, access to a resource is eventually granted, but it is never granted to two requestors simultaneously. Such a statement can conveniently be expressed in a temporal logic.