Solving an equation in an algebra of terms is known as unification. Solving more complex formulas combining equations and involving in particular negation is called disunification. With such a broad definition, many works fall into the scope of disunification. The goal of this paper is to survey these works and bring them together in a same framework. R'esum'e On appelle habituellement (algorithme d') unification un algorithme de r'esolution d'une 'equation dans une alg`ebre de termes. La r'esolution de formules plus complexes, comportant en particulier des n'egations, est appel'ee ici disunification. Avec une d'efinition aussi 'etendue, de nombreux travaux peuvent etre consid'er'es comme portant sur la disunification. L'objet de cet article de synth`ese est de rassembler tous ces travaux dans un meme formalisme. Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Bat. 490, Universit'e de Paris-Sud, 91405 ORSAY cedex, France. E-mail: comon@lri.lri.fr i Contents 1 Syntax 5 1.1 Basic Defini...

We show how to solve boolean combinations of inequations s ? t in the Herbrand Universe, assuming that is interpreted as a lexicographic path ordering extending a total precedence. In other words, we prove that the existential fragment of the theory of a lexicographic path ordering which extends a total precedence is decidable. Keywords: simplification orderings, ordered strategies, term algebras, constraint solving. 1. Introduction The first order theory of term algebras over a language (or alphabet) with no relational symbol (other than equality) has been shown to be decidable 1;2 . See also Refs 3 and 4. Introducing into the language a binary relational symbol interpreted as the subterm ordering makes the theory undecidable 5 . Venkataraman also shows in the latter paper that the purely existential fragment of the theory, i.e. the subset of sentences whose prenex form does not contain 8, is decidable. Venkataraman was concerned with some applications in functional programm...

this paper is to define a framework for such reduction proofs. The method proposed is illustrated by proving the undecidability of the theory of a term algebra modulo the axioms of associativity and commutativity and of the theory of a partial lexicographic path ordering. 1. Introduction

We introduce equality up-to constraints over finite trees and investigate their expressiveness. Equality up-to constraints subsume equality constraints, subtree constraints, and one-step rewriting constraints.

. We survey recent results about ordering constraints on trees and discuss their applications. Our main interest lies in the family of recursive path orderings which enjoy the properties of being total, well-founded and compatible with the tree constructors. The paper includes some new results, in particular the undecidability of the theory of lexicographic path orderings in case of a non-unary signature. 1 Symbolic Constraints Constraints on trees are becoming popular in automated theorem proving, logic programming and in other fields thanks to their potential to represent large or even infinite sets of formulae in a nice and compact way. More precisely, a symbolic constraint system, also called a constraint system on trees, consists of a fragment of first-order logic over a set of predicate symbols P and a set of function symbols F , together with a fixed interpretation of the predicate symbols in the algebra of finite trees T (F) (or sometimes the algebra of infinite trees I(F)) ov...

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We show that the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types is decidable. Let Σ be a language consisting of function symbols (representing type constructors) and C a decidable structure in the relational language L containing a binary relation ≤. C represents primitive types; ≤ represents a subtype ordering. We introduce the notion of Σ-term-power of C, which generalizes the structure arising in structural subtyping. The domain of the Σ-term-power of C is the set of Σ-terms over the set of elements of C. We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of C implies the decidability of the first-order theory of the Σterm-power of C. This result implies the decidability of the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types.

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We present a technique that enables the use of finite model finding to check the satisfiability of certain formulas whose intended models are infinite. Such formulas arise when using the language of sets and relations to reason about structured values such as algebraic datatypes. The key idea of our technique is to identify a natural syntactic class of formulas in relational logic for which reasoning about infinite structures can be reduced to reasoning about finite structures. As a result, when a formula belongs to this class, we can use existing finite model finding tools to check whether the formula holds in the desired infinite model. 1

We study analogs of classical relational calculus in the context of strings. We start by studying string logics. Taking a classical model-theoretic approach, we fix a set of string operations and look at the resulting collection of definable relations. These form an algebra - a class of n-ary relations for every n, closed under projection and Boolean operations. We show that by choosing the string vocabulary carefully, we get string logics that have desirable properties: computable evaluation and normal forms. We identify five distinct models and study the differences in their model-theory and complexity of evaluation. We identify a subset of these models which have additional attractive properties, such as finite VC dimension and quantifier elimination. Once you have a logic,