Termination of rewriting strategies: a generic approach

We propose a generic termination proof method for rewriting under strategies, based on an explicit induction on the termination property. Rewriting trees on ground terms are modeled by proof trees, generated by alternatively applying narrowing and abstracting steps. The induction principle is applied through the abstraction mechanism, where terms are replaced by variables representing any of their normal forms. The induction ordering is not given a priori, but defined with ordering constraints, incrementally set during the proof. Abstraction constraints can be used to control the narrowing mechanism, well known to easily diverge. The generic method is then instantiated for the innermost, outermost and local strategies.Comment: 49 page

Induction for Positive Almost Sure Termination - Extended version -

In this paper, we propose an inductive approach to prove positive almost sure termination of probabilistic rewriting under the innermost strategy. We extend to the probabilistic case a technique we proposed for termination of usual rewriting under strategies. The induction principle consists in assuming that terms smaller than the starting terms for an induction ordering are positively almost surely terminating. The proof is developed in generating proof trees, modelizing rewriting trees, in alternatively applying abstraction steps, expressing the application of the induction hypothesis, and narrowing steps, simulating the possible rewriting steps after abstraction. This technique is fully automatable for rewrite systems on constants, very useful to modelize probabilistic protocols

Termination of rewriting under strategies: a generic approach

We propose a synthesis of three induction based algorithms, we already have given to prove termination of rewrite rule based programs, respectively for the innermost, the outermost and the local strategies. A generic inference principle is presented, based on an explicit induction on the termination property, which genetates ordering constraints, defining the induction relation. The generic inference principle is then instantiated to provide proof procedures for the three specific considered strategies

Strategic Computation and Deduction

We introduce the notion of abstract strategies for abstract reduction systems. Adequate properties of termination, confluence and normalization under strategy can then be defined. Thanks to this abstract concept, we draw a parallel between strategies for computation and strategies for deduction. We define deduction rules as rewrite rules, a deduction step as a rewriting step and a proof construction step as a narrowing step in an adequate abstract reduction system. Computation, deduction and proof search are thus captured in the uniform foundational concept of abstract reduction system in which abstract strategies have a clear formalisation

Reachability Analysis of Innermost Rewriting

Approximating the set of terms reachable by rewriting finds more and more applications ranging from termination proofs of term rewriting systems, cryp- tographic protocol verification to static analysis of programs. However, since approximation techniques do not take rewriting strategies into account, they build very coarse approximations when rewriting is constrained by a specific strategy. In this work, we propose to adapt the Tree Automata Completion algorithm to accurately approximate the set of terms reachable by rewriting under the inner- most strategy. We prove that the proposed technique is sound and precise w.r.t. innermost rewriting. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in the Timbuk reachability tool. Experiments shows that it noticeably improves the accuracy of static analysis for functional programs using the call-by-value evaluation strategy. In particular, for some functional programs needing lazy evaluation to terminate, the computed approximations are precise enough to prove the absence of innermost normal forms, i.e. prove non termination of the program with call-by-value

Loops under Strategies ... Continued

While there are many approaches for automatically proving termination of term rewrite systems, up to now there exist only few techniques to disprove their termination automatically. Almost all of these techniques try to find loops, where the existence of a loop implies non-termination of the rewrite system. However, most programming languages use specific evaluation strategies, whereas loop detection techniques usually do not take strategies into account. So even if a rewrite system has a loop, it may still be terminating under certain strategies. Therefore, our goal is to develop decision procedures which can determine whether a given loop is also a loop under the respective evaluation strategy. In earlier work, such procedures were presented for the strategies of innermost, outermost, and context-sensitive evaluation. In the current paper, we build upon this work and develop such decision procedures for important strategies like leftmost-innermost, leftmost-outermost, (max-)parallel-innermost, (max-)parallel-outermost, and forbidden patterns (which generalize innermost, outermost, and context-sensitive strategies). In this way, we obtain the first approach to disprove termination under these strategies automatically.Comment: In Proceedings IWS 2010, arXiv:1012.533

Extending Context-Sensitivity in Term Rewriting

We propose a generalized version of context-sensitivity in term rewriting based on the notion of "forbidden patterns". The basic idea is that a rewrite step should be forbidden if the redex to be contracted has a certain shape and appears in a certain context. This shape and context is expressed through forbidden patterns. In particular we analyze the relationships among this novel approach and the commonly used notion of context-sensitivity in term rewriting, as well as the feasibility of rewriting with forbidden patterns from a computational point of view. The latter feasibility is characterized by demanding that restricting a rewrite relation yields an improved termination behaviour while still being powerful enough to compute meaningful results. Sufficient criteria for both kinds of properties in certain classes of rewrite systems with forbidden patterns are presented

Faithful (meta-)encodings of programmable strategies into term rewriting systems

Rewriting is a formalism widely used in computer science and mathematical logic. When using rewriting as a programming or modeling paradigm, the rewrite rules describe the transformations one wants to operate and rewriting strategies are used to con- trol their application. The operational semantics of these strategies are generally accepted and approaches for analyzing the termination of specific strategies have been studied. We propose in this paper a generic encoding of classic control and traversal strategies used in rewrite based languages such as Maude, Stratego and Tom into a plain term rewriting system. The encoding is proven sound and complete and, as a direct consequence, estab- lished termination methods used for term rewriting systems can be applied to analyze the termination of strategy controlled term rewriting systems. We show that the encoding of strategies into term rewriting systems can be easily adapted to handle many-sorted signa- tures and we use a meta-level representation of terms to reduce the size of the encodings. The corresponding implementation in Tom generates term rewriting systems compatible with the syntax of termination tools such as AProVE and TTT2, tools which turned out to be very effective in (dis)proving the termination of the generated term rewriting systems. The approach can also be seen as a generic strategy compiler which can be integrated into languages providing pattern matching primitives; experiments in Tom show that applying our encoding leads to performances comparable to the native Tom strategies

Extensional and Intensional Strategies

This paper is a contribution to the theoretical foundations of strategies. We first present a general definition of abstract strategies which is extensional in the sense that a strategy is defined explicitly as a set of derivations of an abstract reduction system. We then move to a more intensional definition supporting the abstract view but more operational in the sense that it describes a means for determining such a set. We characterize the class of extensional strategies that can be defined intensionally. We also give some hints towards a logical characterization of intensional strategies and propose a few challenging perspectives

12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012) : WST 2012, February 19–23, 2012, Obergurgl, Austria / ed. by Georg Moser

This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012), to be held February 19–23, 2012 in Obergurgl, Austria. The goal of the Workshop on Termination is to be a venue for presentation and discussion of all topics in and around termination. In this way, the workshop tries to bridge the gaps between different communities interested and active in research in and around termination. The 12th International Workshop on Termination in Obergurgl continues the successful workshops held in St. Andrews (1993), La Bresse (1995), Ede (1997), Dagstuhl (1999), Utrecht (2001), Valencia (2003), Aachen (2004), Seattle (2006), Paris (2007), Leipzig (2009), and Edinburgh (2010). The 12th International Workshop on Termination did welcome contributions on all aspects of termination and complexity analysis. Contributions from the imperative, constraint, functional, and logic programming communities, and papers investigating applications of complexity or termination (for example in program transformation or theorem proving) were particularly welcome. We did receive 18 submissions which all were accepted. Each paper was assigned two reviewers. In addition to these 18 contributed talks, WST 2012, hosts three invited talks by Alexander Krauss, Martin Hofmann, and Fausto Spoto