arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Hans Zantema.
In this paper we give a criterion by which one can conclude that every reduction of a basic term to normal form has the same length. As a consequence, the number of steps to reach the normal form is independent of the chosen strategy. In particular this holds for TRSs computing addition and multiplication of natural numbers, both in unary and binary notation.
Streams are infinite sequences over a given data type. A stream specification is a set of equations intended to define a stream. A core property is productivity: unfolding the equations produces the intended stream in the limit. In this paper we show that productivity is equivalent to termination with respect to the balanced outermost strategy of a TRS obtained by adding an additional rule. For specifications not involving branching symbols balancedness is obtained for free, by which tools for proving outermost termination can be used to prove productivity fully automatically.
Haken proved that every resolution refutation of the pigeonhole formula has at least exponential size. Groote and Zantema proved that a particular OBDD computation of the pigeonhole formula has an exponential size. Here we show that any arbitrary OBDD refutation of the pigeonhole formula has an exponential size, too: we prove that the size of one of the intermediate OBDDs is at least $Ω(1.025^n)$.
Undecidability of various properties of first order term rewriting systems is well-known. An undecidable property can be classified by the complexity of the formula defining it. This gives rise to a hierarchy of distinct levels of undecidability, starting from the arithmetical hierarchy classifying properties using first order arithmetical formulas and continuing into the analytic hierarchy, where also quantification over function variables is allowed. In this paper we consider properties of first order term rewriting systems and classify them in this hierarchy. Weak and strong normalization for single terms turn out to be Sigma-0-1-complete, while their uniform versions as well as dependency pair problems with minimality flag are Pi-0-2-complete. We find that confluence is Pi-0-2-complete both for single terms and uniform. Unexpectedly weak confluence for ground terms turns out to be harder than weak confluence for open terms. The former property is Pi-0-2-complete while the latter is Sigma-0-1-complete (and thereby recursively enumerable). The most surprising result is on dependency pair problems without minimality flag: we prove this to be Pi-1-1-complete, which means that this property exceeds the arithmetical hierarchy and is essentially analytic.