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Needed reductions with context-sensitive rewriting

  • Term Rewriting
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Algebraic and Logic Programming (ALP 1997, HOA 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1298))

Abstract

Computing with functional programs involves reduction of terms to normal form. When considering non-terminating programs, this is achieved by using some special, normalizing strategy which obtains the normal form whenever it exists. Context-sensitive rewriting can improve termination and also avoid useless reductions by imposing fixed, syntactic restrictions on the replacements. In this paper, we analyze the efficiency of context-sensitive computations with respect to the notion of needed reduction. As context-sensitive rewriting is complete in performing reductions to a root-stable form, we base our investigation on Middeldorp's theory of root-necessary reductions which is a generalization of Huet and Lévy's theory of (sequential) needed reductions to reductions leading to root-stable form both in sequential and parallel executions.

This work has been partially supported by CICYT under grant TIC 95-0433-C03-03.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, E-46071, Valencia, Spain

    Salvador Lucas

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  1. Salvador Lucas
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Michael Hanus Jan Heering Karl Meinke

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Lucas, S. (1997). Needed reductions with context-sensitive rewriting. In: Hanus, M., Heering, J., Meinke, K. (eds) Algebraic and Logic Programming. ALP HOA 1997 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1298. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027007

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027007

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63459-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69555-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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