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A New Equational Unification Method: A Generalisation of Martelli-Montanari’s Algorithm

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 170))

Abstract

We address here the problem of unification in equational theories. A new unification method for some equational theories is given. It is a generalization of the Martelli and Montanari’s algorithm and is based on a decomposition-merging-normalization process. We prove that for the class of decomposable theories this method gives a complete set of unifiers for any equation.

We apply the general results to the MINUS theories that contain axioms like −(−x) =x and −(f(x, y))=f(−y,−x) and we give an original unification algorithm for this type of theory.

This research was supported in part by Anence pour le Developpement de l’Informatique, under contract 82/767.

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Kirchner, C. (1984). A New Equational Unification Method: A Generalisation of Martelli-Montanari’s Algorithm. In: Shostak, R.E. (eds) 7th International Conference on Automated Deduction. CADE 1984. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 170. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34768-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34768-4_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-96022-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34768-4

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