Grammar Rewriting

Abstract

We present a term rewriting procedure based on congruence closure that can be used with arbitrary equational theories. This procedure is motivated by the pragmatic need to prove equations in equational theories where confluence can not be achieved. The procedure uses context free grammars to represent equivalence classes of terms. The procedure rewrites grammars rather than terms and uses congruence closure to maintain certain congruence properties of the grammar. Grammars provide concise representations of large term sets. Infinite term sets can be represented with finite grammars and exponentially large term sets can be represented with linear sized grammars.