Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · cs/0011043

Rewriting Calculus: Foundations and Applications

Horatiu Cirstea
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

This thesis is devoted to the study of a calculus that describes the application of conditional rewriting rules and the obtained results at the same level of representation. We introduce the rewriting calculus, also called the rho-calculus, which generalizes the first order term rewriting and lambda-calculus, and makes possible the representation of the non-determinism. In our approach the abstraction operator as well as the application operator are objects of calculus. The result of a reduction in the rewriting calculus is either an empty set representing the application failure, or a singleton representing a deterministic result, or a set having several elements representing a not-deterministic choice of results. In this thesis we concentrate on the properties of the rewriting calculus where a syntactic matching is used in order to bind the variables to their current values. We define evaluation strategies ensuring the confluence of the calculus and we show that these strategies become trivial for restrictions of the general rewriting calculus to simpler calculi like the lambda-calculus. The rewriting calculus is not terminating in the untyped case but the strong normalization is obtained for the simply typed calculus. In the rewriting calculus extended with an operator allowing to test the application failure we define terms representing innermost and outermost normalizations with respect to a set of rewriting rules. By using these terms, we obtain a natural and concise description of the conditional rewriting. Finally, starting from the representation of the conditional rewriting rules, we show how the rewriting calculus can be used to give a semantics to ELAN, a language based on the application of rewriting rules controlled by strategies.

Explore related subjects

cs.SCcs.LOcs.PL

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Horatiu Cirstea. 2000-11-28. Rewriting Calculus: Foundations and Applications. https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0011043

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Diversity of EML-type operators

The discovery of the EML operator, sufficient to evaluate the standard explicit purely transcendental elementary functions, has led to considerable interest and discussion across multiple scientific disciplines. However, most authors have focused on the binary EML itself, while numerous similar variants with slightly different properties are now known. This article attempts to close this gap by enumerating and classifying them. We also take this opportunity to clarify common misconceptions related to the EML operator. The principal goal, symbolic regression within an architecture as close as possible to proven neural networks which combine matrix multiplication with a single univariate non-linear activation function, remains beyond reach. Instead, we propose a M\"obius layer, with rational functions replacing matrix operations, and showcase the recently discovered activation function eml(x,1/x), which allows exp(x) and ln(x) to be recovered separately, and hence all elementary functions to be evaluated within a rational generalization of the neural network.

cs.SC↗
arXiv2026

Physical Law Ecology: mapping multi-mechanism ecologies as the zeroth step of data-driven scientific discovery

Every data-driven equation discovery method assumes (implicitly and without verification) that the target system obeys a single governing law ($K{=}1$). Here we show that this assumption is the primary bottleneck limiting scientific discovery in multi-mechanism systems, and introduce Physical Law Ecology, a framework that makes $K^*$ (the number of coexisting independent mechanisms) itself the first quantity to be determined from data. The framework automatically mines a pool of topologically distinct candidate equations, constructs a continuous dominance weight field across parameter space, and discovers analytic evolution laws governing mechanism succession---with optional monotonicity constraints encoding irreversible physics. Across four unrelated systems (elastomer mechanics, pool boiling, galactic dynamics, and droplet evaporation), BIC consistently identifies $K^*{=}3$ independent governing topologies. Applied to 163 SPARC galaxies (3,269 spatially resolved measurements), the framework autonomously recovers three gravitational laws whose coexistence provides evidence against the single-universal-acceleration hypothesis of MOND ($p<10^{-34}$). In engineering applications, multi-law weighted prediction reduces error by 67-72\% over single-equation baselines while retaining full interpretability. By establishing the determination of $K^*$ as the zeroth step of scientific discovery-prior to and independent of equation search---this work opens a direction orthogonal to existing symbolic regression: not finding better equations, but mapping the ecology of mechanisms that govern complex systems.

cs.SC↗