2 research outputs found
On the Limits of Second-Order Unification
Second-Order Unification is a problem that naturally arises when applying automated deduction techniques with variables denoting predicates. The problem is undecidable, but a considerable effort has been made in order to find decidable fragments, and understand the deep reasons of its complexity. Two variants of the problem, Bounded Second-Order Unification and Linear Second-Order Unification ¿where the use of bound variables in the instantiations is restricted¿, have been extensively studied in the last two decades. In this paper we summarize some decidability/undecidability/complexity results, trying to focus on those that could be more interesting for a wider audience, and involving less technical details.Peer Reviewe
Nominal Unification from a Higher-Order Perspective
Nominal Logic is a version of first-order logic with equality, name-binding,
renaming via name-swapping and freshness of names. Contrarily to higher-order
logic, bindable names, called atoms, and instantiable variables are considered
as distinct entities. Moreover, atoms are capturable by instantiations,
breaking a fundamental principle of lambda-calculus. Despite these differences,
nominal unification can be seen from a higher-order perspective. From this
view, we show that nominal unification can be reduced to a particular fragment
of higher-order unification problems: Higher-Order Pattern Unification. This
reduction proves that nominal unification can be decided in quadratic
deterministic time, using the linear algorithm for Higher-Order Pattern
Unification. We also prove that the translation preserves most generality of
unifiers