Let E be a first-order equational theory. A translation of typed higher-order E-unification problems into a typed combinatory logic framework is presented and justified. The case in which E admits presentation as a convergent term rewriting system is treated in detail: in this situation, a modification of ordinary narrowing is shown to be a complete method for enumerating higher-order E-unifiers. In fact, we treat a more general problem, in which the types of terms contain type variables. 1 Introduction Investigation of the interaction between first-order and higher-order equational reasoning has emerged as an active line of research. The collective import of a recent series of papers, originating with [Bre88] and including (among others) [Bar90], [BG91a], [BG91b], [Dou92], [JO91] and [Oka89], is that when various typed -calculi are enriched by first-order equational theories, the validity problem is well-behaved, and furthermore that the respective computational approaches to ...

We present an algorithm for unification in the simply typed lambda calculus which enumerates complete sets of unifiers using a finitely branching search space. In fact, the types of terms may contain type-variables, so that a solution may involve typesubstitution as well as term-substitution. the problem is first translated into the problem of unification with respect to extensional equality in combinatory logic, and the algorithm is defined in terms of transformations on systems of combinatory terms. These transformations are based on a new method (itself based on systems) for deciding extensional equality between typed combinatory logic terms. 1 Introduction This paper develops a new algorithm for higher-order unification. A higher-order unification problem is specified by two terms F and G of the explicitly simply typed lambda calculus LC; a solution is a substitution oe such that oeF = fij oeG. We will always assume the extensionality axiom j in this paper. In fact we tre...

Abstract Let R be a convergent term rewriting system, and let CR-equality on (simply typed) combinatory logic terms be the equality induced by βηRequality on terms of the (simply typed) lambda calculus under any of the standard translations between these two frameworks for higher-order reasoning. We generalize the classical notion of strong reduction to a reduction relation which generates CR-equality and whose irreducibles are exactly the translates of long βR-normal forms. The classical notion of strong normal form in combinatory logic is also generalized, yielding yet another description of these translates. Their resulting tripartite characterization extends to the combined first-order algebraic and higher-order setting the classical combinatory logic descriptions of the translates of long β-normal forms in the lambda calculus. As a consequence, the translates of long βR-normal forms are easily seen to serve as canonical representatives for CR-equivalence classes of combinatory logic terms for nonempty, as well as for empty, R. 573

received..., revised..., accepted.... Combinatory logic shows that bound variables can be eliminated without loss of expressiveness. It has applications both in the foundations of mathematics and in the implementation of functional programming languages. The original combinatory calculus corresponds to minimal implicative logic written in a system “à la Hilbert”. We present in this paper a combinatory logic which corresponds to propositional classical logic. This system is equivalent to the system