Abstract
Term rewriting is commonly implemented by graph reduction in order to improve efficiency. In general, however, graph reduction is not complete: a term may be not normalizable through graph derivations although a normal form exists. Term rewriting systems which permit a complete implementation by graph reduction are called graph-reducible. We show that the following property is sufficient for graph-reducibility: every term having a normal form can be normalized by parallel term rewrite steps in which a rule is applied to all occurrences of some subterm. As a consequence, a broad class of term rewriting systems which includes all terminating and all orthogonal systems can be shown to be graph-reducible.
Work supported by ESPRIT Basic Research Working Group #3264, COMPASS.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Plump, D. (1991). Graph-reducible term rewriting systems. In: Ehrig, H., Kreowski, HJ., Rozenberg, G. (eds) Graph Grammars and Their Application to Computer Science. Graph Grammars 1990. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 532. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0017417
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0017417
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