## Assignments and symbolic transitions

Let us go back to the example test/tla/y2k.tla and run apalache against test/tla/y2k_override.tla:

$apalache check y2k_override.tla  We can check the detailed output of the TransitionFinderPass in the file _apalache-out/y2k_override.tla/<timestamp>/09_OutTransition.tla, where <timestamp> looks like 2021-12-01T12-07-41_1998641578103809179: ---------------------------- MODULE y2k_override ---------------------------- (* * One way to instantiate constants for apalache is to use the OVERRIDE prefix. *) EXTENDS y2k OVERRIDE_BIRTH_YEAR == 80 OVERRIDE_LICENSE_AGE == 18 ============================================================================= \* Modification History \* Last modified Tue Jan 07 11:24:55 CET 2020 by igor \* Created Tue Jan 07 11:16:18 CET 2020 by igor  As you can see, the model checker did two things: 1. It has translated several expressions that look like x' = e into x' := e. For instance, you can see year' := 80 and hasLicense' := FALSE in Init$0. We call these expressions assignments.
2. It has factored the operator Next into two operators Next$0 and Next$1. We call these operators symbolic transitions.

Pure TLA+ does not have the notions of assignments and symbolic transitions. However, TLC sometimes treats expressions x' = e and x' \in S as if they were assigning a value to the variable x'. TLC does so dynamically, during the breadth-first search. Apalache looks statically for assignments among the expressions x' = e and x' \in S.

When factoring out operators into symbolic transitions, Apalache splits the action operators Init and Next into disjunctions (e.g., A_0 \/ ... \/ A_n), represented in the concrete syntax as a sequence of operator definitions of the form

A$0 == ... ... A$n == ...


The main contract between the assignments and symbolic transitions is as follows:

For every variable x declared with VARIABLE, there is exactly one assignment of the form x' := e in every symbolic transition A_n.

If Apalache cannot find expressions with the above properties, it fails. Consider the example test/tla/Assignments20200309.tla:

----- MODULE Assignments20200309 -----
VARIABLE
\* @type: Int;
a

\* this specification fails, as it has no expression
\* that can be treated as an assignment
Init == TRUE
Next == a' = a
Inv == FALSE
===============


Run the checker with:

apalache check Assignments20200309.tla


Apalache reports an error as follows:

...
PASS #9: TransitionFinderPass
To understand the error, check the manual:
[https://apalache.informal.systems/docs/apalache/assignments.html]
Assignment error: No assignments found for: a
It took me 0 days  0 hours  0 min  1 sec
Total time: 1.88 sec
EXITCODE: ERROR (99)


### More details

Check Assignments and Symbolic Transitions in Depth.