\texttt{ReMind}: Understanding Deductive Code Reasoning in LLMs
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866915591883849728 |
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| author | Gao, Jun Peng, Yun Ren, Xiaoxue |
| author_facet | Gao, Jun Peng, Yun Ren, Xiaoxue |
| contents | Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in code-related tasks. Despite their advancement, empirical evidence reveals that they still struggle with \emph{deductive code reasoning}, the ability to reason about the program execution process. While prior studies have recognized this limitation, the underlying causes remain largely underexplored. In this paper, we begin by presenting a comprehensive empirical study that reveals three key challenges undermining deductive code reasoning: (1) an intrinsic gap between generation and reasoning abilities, (2) a consistent bias towards code sources, and (3) weak zero-shot generalization on complex benchmarks. In light of these challenges, we propose \texttt{ReMind}, a multi-agent framework composed of \texttt{Mutator}, \texttt{Executor}, and \texttt{Inspector}. The \texttt{Mutator} generates code variants to mitigate bias towards code sources, the \texttt{Executor} traces variable states step-by-step to expose inconsistency, and the \texttt{Inspector} identifies problematic reasoning steps and provides control-flow refinement to bridge the intrinsic reasoning gap. Through their coordinated collaboration, \texttt{ReMind} systematically identifies and refines reasoning flaws, achieving outstanding performance and enabling robust zero-shot generalization. Extensive experiments on two benchmarks with five LLMs demonstrate the superior advantages of \texttt{ReMind} compared to baseline approaches in deductive code reasoning. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_00488 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | \texttt{ReMind}: Understanding Deductive Code Reasoning in LLMs Gao, Jun Peng, Yun Ren, Xiaoxue Programming Languages Computation and Language Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in code-related tasks. Despite their advancement, empirical evidence reveals that they still struggle with \emph{deductive code reasoning}, the ability to reason about the program execution process. While prior studies have recognized this limitation, the underlying causes remain largely underexplored. In this paper, we begin by presenting a comprehensive empirical study that reveals three key challenges undermining deductive code reasoning: (1) an intrinsic gap between generation and reasoning abilities, (2) a consistent bias towards code sources, and (3) weak zero-shot generalization on complex benchmarks. In light of these challenges, we propose \texttt{ReMind}, a multi-agent framework composed of \texttt{Mutator}, \texttt{Executor}, and \texttt{Inspector}. The \texttt{Mutator} generates code variants to mitigate bias towards code sources, the \texttt{Executor} traces variable states step-by-step to expose inconsistency, and the \texttt{Inspector} identifies problematic reasoning steps and provides control-flow refinement to bridge the intrinsic reasoning gap. Through their coordinated collaboration, \texttt{ReMind} systematically identifies and refines reasoning flaws, achieving outstanding performance and enabling robust zero-shot generalization. Extensive experiments on two benchmarks with five LLMs demonstrate the superior advantages of \texttt{ReMind} compared to baseline approaches in deductive code reasoning. |
| title | \texttt{ReMind}: Understanding Deductive Code Reasoning in LLMs |
| topic | Programming Languages Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00488 |