String diagrams provide an intuitive language for expressing networks of
interacting processes graphically. A discrete representation of string
diagrams, called string graphs, allows for mechanised equational reasoning by
double-pushout rewriting. However, one often wishes to express not just single
equations, but entire families of equations between diagrams of arbitrary size.
To do this we define a class of context-free grammars, called B-ESG grammars,
that are suitable for defining entire families of string graphs, and crucially,
of string graph rewrite rules. We show that the language-membership and
match-enumeration problems are decidable for these grammars, and hence that
there is an algorithm for rewriting string graphs according to B-ESG rewrite
patterns. We also show that it is possible to reason at the level of grammars
by providing a simple method for transforming a grammar by string graph
rewriting, and showing admissibility of the induced B-ESG rewrite pattern.Comment: International Conference on Graph Transformation, ICGT 2015. The
final publication is available at Springer via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21145-9_