2,165 research outputs found
Termination orderings for associative-commutative rewriting systems
In this paper we describe a new class of orderingsāassociative path orderingsāfor proving termination of associative-commutative term rewriting systems .These orderings are based on the concept of simplification orderings and extend the well-known recursive path orderings to E - congruence classes, where E is an equational theory consisting of associativity and commutativity axioms. Associative path orderings are applicable to term rewriting systems for which a precedence ordering on the set of operator symbols can be defined that satisfies a certain condition,the associative path condition. The precedence ordering can often be derived from the structure of the reduction rules. We include termination proofs for various term rewriting systems (for rings,boolean algebra,etc.) and, in addition, point out ways to handle situations where the associative path condition is too restrictive
Decreasing Diagrams for Confluence and Commutation
Like termination, confluence is a central property of rewrite systems. Unlike
for termination, however, there exists no known complexity hierarchy for
confluence. In this paper we investigate whether the decreasing diagrams
technique can be used to obtain such a hierarchy. The decreasing diagrams
technique is one of the strongest and most versatile methods for proving
confluence of abstract rewrite systems. It is complete for countable systems,
and it has many well-known confluence criteria as corollaries.
So what makes decreasing diagrams so powerful? In contrast to other
confluence techniques, decreasing diagrams employ a labelling of the steps with
labels from a well-founded order in order to conclude confluence of the
underlying unlabelled relation. Hence it is natural to ask how the size of the
label set influences the strength of the technique. In particular, what class
of abstract rewrite systems can be proven confluent using decreasing diagrams
restricted to 1 label, 2 labels, 3 labels, and so on? Surprisingly, we find
that two labels suffice for proving confluence for every abstract rewrite
system having the cofinality property, thus in particular for every confluent,
countable system.
Secondly, we show that this result stands in sharp contrast to the situation
for commutation of rewrite relations, where the hierarchy does not collapse.
Thirdly, investigating the possibility of a confluence hierarchy, we
determine the first-order (non-)definability of the notion of confluence and
related properties, using techniques from finite model theory. We find that in
particular Hanf's theorem is fruitful for elegant proofs of undefinability of
properties of abstract rewrite systems
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