Interner Bericht / Fachbereich Informatik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M.
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96,2
94,12
We consider the problem of unifying a set of equations between second-order terms. Terms are constructed from function symbols, constant symbols and variables, and furthermore using monadic second-order variables that may stand for a term with one hole, and parametric terms. We consider stratified systems, where for every first-order and second-order variable, the string of second-order variables on the path from the root of a term to every occurrence of this variable is always the same. It is shown that unification of stratified second-order terms is decidable by describing a nondeterministic decision algorithm that eventually uses Makanin's algorithm for deciding the unifiability of word equations. As a generalization, we show that the method can be used as a unification procedure for non-stratified second-order systems, and describe conditions for termination in the general case.
94,13
We consider unification of terms under the equational theory of two-sided distributivity D with the axioms x*(y+z) = x*y + x*z and (x+y)*z = x*z + y*z. The main result of this paper is that Dunification is decidable by giving a non-deterministic transformation algorithm. The generated unification are: an AC1-problem with linear constant restrictions and a second-order unification problem that can be transformed into a word-unification problem that can be decided using Makanin's algorithm. This solves an open problem in the field of unification. Furthermore it is shown that the word-problem can be decided in polynomial time, hence D-matching is NP-complete.