Sparse Tiling Through Overlap Closures for Termination of String Rewriting

A strictly locally testable language is characterized by its set of admissible factors, prefixes and suffixes, called tiles. We over-approximate reachability sets in string rewriting by languages defined by sparse sets of tiles, containing only those that are reachable in derivations. Using the partial algebra defined by a tiling for semantic labeling, we obtain a transformational method for proving local termination. These algebras can be represented efficiently as finite automata of a certain shape. Using a known result on forward closures, and a new characterisation of overlap closures, we can automatically prove termination and relative termination, respectively. We report on experiments showing the strength of the method