Non-Linear Rewrite Closure and Weak Normalization

A rewrite closure is an extension of a term rewrite system with new rules, usually deduced by transitivity. Rewrite closures have the nice property that all rewrite derivations can be transformed into derivations of a simple form. This property has been useful for proving decidability results in term rewriting. Unfortunately, when the term rewrite system is not linear, the construction of a rewrite closure is quite challenging. In this paper, we construct a rewrite closure for term rewrite systems that satisfy two properties: the right-hand side term in each rewrite rule contains no repeated variable (right-linear) and contains no variable occurring at depth greater than one (right-shallow). The left-hand side term is unrestricted, and in particular, it may be non-linear. As a consequence of the rewrite closure construction, we are able to prove decidability of the weak normalization problem for right-linear right-shallow term rewrite systems. Proving this result also requires tree automata theory. We use the fact that right-shallow right-linear term rewrite systems are regularity preserving. Moreover, their set of normal forms can be represented with a tree automaton with disequality constraints, and emptiness of this kind of automata, as well as its generalization to reduction automata, is decidable. A preliminary version of this work was presented at LICS 2009 (Creus 2009).     

Decidability of the confluence of finite ground term rewrite systems and of other related term rewrite systems

The aim of this paper is to propose an algorithm to decide the confluence of finite ground term rewrite systems. Actually a more general class of possibly infinite ground term rewrite systems is studied. It is well known that the confluence is not decidable for general term rewrite systems, but this paper proves it is for ground term rewrite systems following a conjecture made by Huet and Oppen in their survey. The result is also applied to the confluence of left-linear and right-ground term rewrite systems. We also sketch an algorithm for checking this property. This algorithm is based on tree automata and tree transducers. Here, we regard them as rewrite systems and specialists in automata theory would translate that easily in their language.     

Simulation Preorder over Simple Process Algebras

We consider the problem of simulation preorder/equivalence between infinite-state processes and finite-state ones. First, we describe a general method how to utilize the decidability of bisimulation problems to solve (certain instances of) the corresponding simulation problems. For certain process classes, the method allows us to design effective reductions of simulation problems to their bisimulation counterparts and some new decidability results for simulation have already been obtained in this way. Then we establish the decidability border for the problem of simulation preorder/equivalence between infinite-state processes and finite-state ones w.r.t. the hierarchy of process rewrite systems. In particular, we show that simulation preorder (in both directions) and simulation equivalence are decidable in EXPTIME between pushdown processes and finite-state ones. On the other hand, simulation preorder is undecidable between PA and finite-state processes in both directions. These results also hold for those PA and finite-state processes which are deterministic and normed, and thus immediately extend to trace preorder. Regularity (finiteness) w.r.t. simulation and trace equivalence is also shown to be undecidable for PA. Finally, we prove that simulation preorder (in both directions) and simulation equivalence are intractable between all classes of infinite-state systems (in the hierarchy of process rewrite systems) and finite-state ones. This result is obtained by showing that the problem whether a BPA (or BPP) process simulates a finite-state one is PSPACE-hard and the other direction is co -hard; consequently, simulation equivalence between BPA (or BPP) and finite-state processes is also co -hard.     

Some Undecidable Approximations of TRSs

In this paper we study the decidability of reachability, normalisation, and neededness in n-shallow and n-growing TRSs. In an n-growing TRS, a variable that occurs both on the left- and right-hand side of a rewrite rule must be at depth n on the left-hand side and at depth greater than n on the right-hand side. In an n-shallow TRS, a variable that occurs both on the left- and right-hand side of a rewrite rule must be at depth n on both sides.The n-growing and n-shallow TRSs are generalisations of the growing and shallow TRSs as introduced by Jacquemard and Comon. For both shallow and growing TRSs reachability, normalisation, and (in the orthogonal case) neededness are decidable. However, as we show, these results do not generalise to n-growing and n-shallow TRSs. Consequently, no algorithm exists that performs a needed reduction strategy in n-growing or n-shallow TRSs.     

Autowrite: A Tool for Term Rewrite Systems and Tree Automata

Autowrite is an experimental software tool written in Common Lisp Oriented System (CLOS) which handles term rewrite systems and bottom-up tree automata. A graphical interface written using McCLIM, (the free implementation of the CLIM specification) frees the user of any Lisp knowledge. Software and documentation can be found at http://dept-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~idurand/autowrite. Autowrite was initially designed to check call-by-need properties of term rewrite systems. For this purpose, it implements the tree automata constructions used in [F. Jacquemard. Decidable approximations of term rewriting systems. In Proc. 7th RTA, volume 1103 of LNCS, pages 362–376, 1996; I. Durand and A. Middeldorp. Decidable call by need computations in term rewriting (extended abstract). In Proc. 14th CADE, volume 1249 of LNAI, pages 4–18, 1997; Irène Durand and Aart Middeldorp. On the complexity of deciding call-by-need. Technical Report 1196–98, LaBRI, 1998; T. Nagaya and Y. Toyama. Decidability for left-linear growing term rewriting systems. Information and Computation, 178(2):499–514, 2002] and many useful operations on terms, term rewrite systems and tree automata.     

Termination Proofs for String Rewriting Systems via Inverse Match-Bounds

Annotating a letter by a number, one can record information about its history during a rewrite derivation. In each rewrite step, numbers in the reduct are updated depending on the redex numbering. A string rewriting system is called match-bounded if there is a global upper bound to these numbers. Match-boundedness is known to be a strong sufficient criterion for both termination and preservation of regular languages. We show that the string rewriting systems whose inverse (left and right hand sides exchanged) is match-bounded, also have exceptional properties, but slightly different ones. Inverse match-bounded systems need not terminate; they effectively preserve context-free languages; their sets of normalizable strings and their sets of immortal strings are effectively regular. These languages can be used to decide the normalization, the uniform normalization, the termination and the uniform termination problem for inverse match-bounded systems. We also prove that the termination problem is decidable in linear time, and that a certain strong reachability problem is decidable, thereby solving two open problems of McNaughton’s. Like match-bounds, inverse match-bounds entail linear derivational complexity on the set of terminating strings.     

The Undecidability of the First-Order Theories of One Step Rewriting in Linear Canonical Systems

By reduction from the halting problem for Minsky's two-register machines we prove that there is no algorithm capable of deciding the -theory of one step rewriting of an arbitrary finite linear confluent finitely terminating term rewriting system (weak undecidability). We also present a fixed such system with undecidable *-theory of one step rewriting (strong undecidability). This improves over all previously known results of the same kind.     

Sufficient-completeness,ground-reducibility and their complexity

Summary The sufficient-completeness property of equational algebraic specifications has been found useful in providing guidelines for designing abstract data type specifications as well as in proving inductive properties using the induction-less-induction method. The sufficient-completeness property is known to be undecidable in general. In an earlier paper, it was shown to be decidable for constructor-preserving, complete (canonical) term rewriting systems, even when there are relations among constructor symbols. In this paper, the complexity of the sufficient-completeness property is analyzed for different classes of term rewriting systems. A number of results about the complexity of the sufficient-completeness property for complete (canonical) term rewriting systems are proved: (i) The problem is co-NP-complete for term rewriting systems with free constructors (i.e., no relations among constructors are allowed), (ii) the problem remains co-NP-complete for term rewriting systems with unary and nullary constructors, even when there are relations among constructors, (iii) the problem is provably in almost exponential time for left-linear term rewriting systems with relations among constructors, and (iv) for left-linear complete constructor-preserving rewriting systems, the problem can be decided in steps exponential innlogn wheren is the size of the rewriting system. No better lower-bound for the complexity of the sufficient-completeness property for complete (canonical) term rewriting system with nonlinear left-hand sides is known. An algorithm for left-linear complete constructor-preserving rewriting systems is also discussed. Finally, the sufficient-completeness property is shown to be undecidable for non-linear complete term rewriting systems with associative functions. These complexity results also apply to the ground-reducibility property (also called inductive-reducibility) which is known to be directly related to the sufficient-completeness property.Some of the results in this paper were reported in a paper titled Complexity of Sufficient-Completeness presented at theSixth Conf. on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science, New Delhi, India, Dec. 1986. The term quasi-reducibility is replaced in this paper by ground-reducibility as the latter seems to convey a lot more about the concept than the former.Partially supported by the National Science Foundation Grant nos. CCR-8408461 and CCR-8906678Partially supported by the National Science Foundation Grant nos. CCR-8408461 and CCR-9009414Partially supported by the National Science Foundation Grant no. DCR-8603184     

A Monadic Second-Order Definition of the Structure of Convex Hypergraphs

We consider finite hypergraphs with hyperedges defined as sets of vertices of unbounded cardinality. Each such hypergraph has a unique modular decomposition, which is a tree, the nodes of which correspond to certain subhypergraphs (induced by certain sets of vertices called strong modules) of the considered hypergraph. One can define this decomposition by monadic second-order (MS) logical formulas. Such a hypergraph is convex if the vertices are linearly ordered in such a way that the hyperedges form intervals. Our main result says that the unique linear order witnessing the convexity of a prime hypergraph (i.e., of one, the modular decomposition of which is trivial) can be defined in MS logic. As a consequence, we obtain that if a set of bipartite graphs that correspond (in the usual way) to convex hypergraphs has a decidable monadic second-order theory (which means that one can decide whether a given MS formula is satisfied in some graph of the set) then it has bounded clique-width. This yields a new case of validity of a conjecture which is still open.     

An Algebra of Discrete Channels That Involve Combinations of Three Basic Error Types

Recently, the author introduced a nonprobabilistic mathematical model of discrete channels, the BEE channels, that involve the error-types substitution, insertion, and deletion. This paper defines an important class of BEE channels, the SID channels, which include channels that permit a bounded number of scattered errors and, possibly at the same time, a bounded burst of errors in any segment of predefined length of a message. A formal syntax is defined for generating channel expressions, and appropriate semantics is provided for interpreting a given channel expression as a communication channel (SID channel) that permits combinations of substitutions, insertions, and deletions of symbols. Our framework permits one to generalize notions such as error correction and unique decodability, and express statements of the form “The code K can correct all errors of type ξ” and “it is decidable whether the code K is uniquely decodable for the channel described by ξ”, where ξ is any SID channel expression.     

On modularity in infinitary term rewriting

We study modular properties in strongly convergent infinitary term rewriting. In particular, we show that:

• •Confluence is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems, even when these are non-collapsing.
• •Confluence modulo equality of hypercollapsing subterms is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems.
• •Normalization is not preserved across direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems.
• •Unique normalization with respect to reduction is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

Together, these facts constitute a radical departure from the situation in finitary term rewriting. Positive results are:

• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems iff at most one system contains a collapsing rule.
• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of non-collapsing systems if only terms of finite rank are considered.
• •Top-termination is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.
• •Normalization is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

All of the negative results above hold in the setting of weakly convergent rewriting as well, as do the positive results concerning modularity of top-termination and normalization for left-linear systems.     

Working with ARMs: Complexity Results on Atomic Representations of Herbrand Models

An atomic representation of a Herbrand model (ARM) is a finite set of (not necessarily ground) atoms over a given Herbrand universe. Each ARM represents a possibly infinite Herbrand interpretation. This concept has emerged independently in different branches of computer science as a natural and useful generalization of the concept of finite Herbrand interpretation. It was shown that several recursively decidable problems on finite Herbrand models (or interpretations) remain decidable on ARMs.The following problems are essential when working with ARMs: Deciding the equivalence of two ARMs, deciding subsumption between ARMs, and evaluating clauses over ARMs. These problems were shown to be decidable, but their computational complexity has remained obscure so far. The previously published decision algorithms require exponential space. In this paper, we prove that all mentioned problems are coNP-complete.     

Test Sets for the Universal and Existential Closure of Regular Tree Languages

Finite test sets are a useful tool for deciding the membership problem for the universal closure of a given tree language, that is, for deciding whether a term has all its ground instances in the given language. A uniform test set for the universal closure must serve the following purpose: In order to decide membership of a term, it is sufficient to check whether all its test set instances belong to the underlying language. A possible application, and our main motivation, is ground reducibility, an essential concept for many approaches to inductive reasoning. Ground reducibility modulo some rewrite system is membership in the universal closure of the set of reducible ground terms. Here, test sets always exist, and several algorithmic approaches are known. The resulting sets, however, are often unnecessarily large. In this paper we consider regular languages and linear closure operators. We prove that universal as well as existential closure, defined analogously, preserve regularity. By relating test sets to tree automata and to appropriate congruence relations, we show how to characterize, how to compute, and how to minimize ground and non-ground test sets. In particular, optimal solutions now replace previous ad hoc approximations for the ground reducibility problem.     

Decidable Integration Graphs

Integration graphsare a computational model developed in the attempt to identify simple hybrid systems with decidable analysis problems. We start with the class ofconstant slope hybrid systems(CSHS), in which the right-hand side of all differential equations is an integer constant. We refer to continuous variables whose right-hand side constants are always 1 astimers. All other continuous variables are calledintegrators. The first result shown in the paper is that simple questions such as reachability of a given state are undecidable for even this simple class of systems. To restrict the model even further, we impose the requirement that no test that refers to integrators may appear within a loop in the graph. This restricted class of CSHS is calledintegration graphs. The main results of the paper are that the reachability problem of integration graphs is decidable for two special cases: the case of a single timer and the case of a single test involving integrators. The expressive power of the integration-graphs formalism is demonstrated by showing that some typical problems studied within the context of the calculus of durations and timed statecharts can be formulated as reachability problems for restricted integration graphs, and a high fraction of these fall into the subclasses of a single timer or a single test involving integrators.     

A class of confluent term rewriting systems and unification

The narrowing mechanism and term rewriting systems are powerful tools for constructing complete and efficient unification algorithms for useful classes of equational theories. This has been shown for the case where term rewriting systems are confluent and noetherian (i.e., terminating). In this paper we show that the narrowing mechanism, combined with ordinary unification, yields a complete unification algorithm for equational theories that can be described by a closed linear term rewriting system with the non-repetition property; this class allows non-terminating rewrite systems. For some special forms of input terms, narrowing generates complete sets of E-unifiers without resorting to the non-repetition property. The key observation underlying the proof is that a reduction sequence in this class of term rewriting system can be transformed into one which possesses properties that enable a completeness proof.     

Encoding Linear Logic with Interaction Combinators

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Lafont's interaction combinators, a system of three symbols and six interaction rules, can be used to encode linear logic. Specifically, we give a translation of the multiplicative, exponential, and additive fragments of linear logic together with a strategy for cut-elimination which can be faithfully simulated. Finally, we show briefly how this encoding can be used for evaluating λ-terms. In addition to offering a very simple, perhaps the simplest, system of rewriting for linear logic and the λ-calculus, the interaction net implementation that we present has been shown by experimental testing to offer a good level of sharing in terms of the number of cut-elimination steps (resp. β-reduction steps). In particular it performs better than all extant finite systems of interaction nets.     

Shallow confluence of conditional term rewriting systems

Recursion can be conveniently modeled with left-linear positive/negative-conditional term rewriting systems, provided that non-termination, non-trivial critical overlaps, non-right-stability, non-normality, and extra variables are admitted. For such systems we present novel sufficient criteria for shallow confluence and arrive at the first decidable confluence criterion admitting non-trivial critical overlaps. To this end, we restrict the introduction of extra variables of right-hand sides to binding equations and require the critical pairs to have somehow complementary literals in their conditions. Shallow confluence implies [level] confluence, has applications in functional logic programming, and guarantees the object-level consistency of the underlying data types in the inductive theorem prover QuodLibet.     

Mobile Objects as Mobile Processes

Obliq is a lexically scoped, distributed, object-based programming language. In Obliq, the migration of an object is proposed as creating a clone of the object at the target site, whereafter the original object is turned into an alias for the clone. Obliq has only an informal semantics, so there is no proof that this style of migration is safe, i.e., transparent to object clients. In previous work, we introduced Ø, an abstraction of Obliq, where, by lexical scoping, sites have been abstracted away. We used Ø in order to exhibit how the semantics behind Obliq's implementation renders migration unsafe. We also suggested a modified semantics that we conjectured instead to be safe. In this paper, we rewrite our modified semantics of Ø in terms of the π-calculus, and we use it to formally prove the correctness of object surrogation, the abstraction of object migration in Ø.     

Four equivalent equivalences of reductions

Two co-initial reductions in a term rewriting system are said to be equivalent if they perform the same steps, albeit maybe in a different order. We present four characterisations of such a notion of equivalence, based on permutation, standardisation, labelling and projection, respectively. We prove that the characterisations all yield the same notion of equivalence, for the class of first-order left-linear term rewriting systems. A crucial rôle in our development is played by the notion of a proof term.