It is well-known that a term rewriting system can be faithfully described by a cartesian 2-category, where horizontal arrows represent terms, and cells represent rewriting sequences. In this paper we propose a similar, original 2-categorical presentation for term graph rewriting. Building on a result presented in [8], which shows that term graphs over a given signature are in one-to-one correspondence with arrows of a gs-monoidal category freely generated from the signature, we associate with a term graph rewriting system a gs-monoidal 2-category, and show that cells faithfully represent its rewriting sequences. We exploit the categorical framework to relate term graph rewriting and term rewriting, since gs-monoidal (2-)categories can be regarded as "weak" cartesian (2-)categories, where certain (2-)naturality axioms have been dropped.

The article introduces a novel notion of lazy rewriting. By annotating argument positions as lazy, redundant rewrite steps are avoided, and the termination behaviour of a term rewriting system can be improved. Some transformations of rewrite rules enable an implementation using the same primitives as an implementation of eager rewriting. 1

Acyclic Term Graphs are able to represent terms with sharing, and the relationship between Term Graph Rewriting (TGR) and Term Rewrtiting (TR) is now well understood [BvEG + 87, HP91]. During the last years, some researchers considered the extension of TGR to possibly cyclic term graphs, which can represent possibly infinite, rational terms. In [KKSdV94] the authors formalize the classical relationship between TGR and TR as an "adequate mapping" between rewriting systems, and extend it by proving that unraveling is an adequate mapping from cyclic TGR to rational, infinitary term rewriting: In fact, a single graph reduction may correspond to an infinite sequence of term reductions. Using the same notions, we propose a different adequacy result, showing that unraveling is an adequate mapping from cyclic TGR to rational parallel term rewriting, where at each reduction infinitely many rules can be applied in parallel. We also argue that our adequacy result is more natural...

Abstract not found

. We present a categorical formulation of the rewriting of possibly cyclic term graphs, based on a variation of algebraic 2-theories. We show that this presentation is equivalent to the well-accepted operational definition proposed by Barendregt et alii---but for the case of circular redexes, for which we propose (and justify formally) a different treatment. The categorical framework allows us to model in a concise way also automatic garbage collection and rules for sharing/unsharing and folding/unfolding of structures, and to relate term graph rewriting to other rewriting formalisms. R'esum'e. Nous pr'esentons une formulation cat'egorique de la r'e'ecriture des graphes cycliques des termes, bas'ee sur une variante de 2-theorie alg'ebrique. Nous prouvons que cette pr'esentation est 'equivalente `a la d'efinition op'erationnelle propos'ee par Barendregt et d'autres auteurs, mais pas dons le cas des radicaux circulaires, pour lesquels nous proposons (et justifions formellem...

We present a survey of confluence properties of (acyclic) term graph rewriting. Results and counterexamples are given for different kinds of term graph rewriting: besides plain applications of rewrite rules, extensions with the operations of collapsing and copying, and with both operations together are considered. Collapsing and copying together constitute bisimilarity of term graphs. We establish sufficient conditions for---and counterexamples to---confluence, confluence modulo bisimilarity and the Church-Rosser property modulo bisimilarity. Moreover, we address rewriting modulo bisimilarity, that is, rewriting of bisimilarity classes of term graphs. 1991 Computing Reviews Classification System: F.1.1, F.4.1, F.4.2 Keywords and Phrases: term graph rewriting, bisimilarity, confluence, Church-Rosser property Note: Work carried out under project SEN2.2, Data Manipulation. Part of the research of the third author was performed while he was on leave at CWI by a grant of the HCM ne...