Unification and combination of a class of traversal strategies made with pattern matching and fixed-points

• Published in: Journal of logical and algebraic methods in programming Vol. 125; p. 100746
• Main Authors: Belkhir, Walid, Ratier, Nicolas, Nguyen, Duy Duc, Lenczner, Michel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.02.2022; Elsevier
• Subjects: Combination; Engineering Sciences; Fixed-point; Other; Traversal strategies; Unification; μ-Calculus; Traversal strategies; μ-Calculus; Fixed-point; Combination; Unification
• ISSN: 2352-2208
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jlamp.2021.100746

•We unify and combine strategies made with pattern matching and fixed-points.•The unification and combination are associative and a congruence.•The unification and combination could be commutative and idempotent under some assumptions.•We formally prove that the unification and combination algorithm is correct.•The minimization or reduction problem of strategies made with pattern matching and fixed-points is left open. Motivated by an ongoing project on computer aided derivation of asymptotic models governed by partial differential equations, we introduce a class of term transformations that consists of traversal strategies and insertion of contexts. We define unification and combination operations on this class which amount to merging transformations in order to obtain more complex ones. We show that the unification and combination operations enjoy nice algebraic properties like associativity, congruence and the existence of neutral elements. The main part of this paper is devoted to proving that the unification and combination operations are correct.