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Universal Regular Path Queries

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Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

Given are a directed edge-labelled graph G with a distinguished node n 0, and a regular expression P which may contain variables. We wish to compute all substitutions Φ (of symbols for variables), together with all nodes n such that all paths n 0 → n are in Φ(P). We derive an algorithm for this problem using relational algebra, and show how it may be implemented in Prolog. The motivation for the problem derives from a declarative framework for specifying compiler optimisations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford University Computing Laboratory, USA

    Oege de Moor & David Lacey

  2. University of Minnesota, USA

    Eric Van Wyk

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  1. Oege de Moor
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  2. David Lacey
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de Moor, O., Lacey, D. & Van Wyk, E. Universal Regular Path Queries. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 16, 15–35 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023063919574

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