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 a collection of results on the decidability and the computational complexity of a syntactic unification problem under constrained substitutions. A number of decidable, undecidable, tractable and intractable results of the problem are presented. Since a unification problem under constrained substitutions can be regarded as an order-sorted unification problem with term declarations such that the number of sorts is only one, the results presented in this paper also indicate how the intractability of order-sorted unification problems is reduced by restricting the number of sorts to one.