18th Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS'03)
Orienting Equalities with the Knuth-Bendix Order
Ottawa, Canada
June 22-June 25
ISBN: 0-7695-1884-2
Orientability of systems of equalities is the following problem: given a system of equalities s1 \simeq t1,...,n \simeq tn, does there exist a simplification ordering \succ which orients the system, that is for every i \in {1,..., n}, either si \succ ti or ti \succ si. This problem can be used in rewriting for finding a canonical rewrite system for a system of equalities and in theorem proving for adjusting simplification orderings during completion. We prove that (rather surprisingly) the problem can be solved in polynomial time when we restrict ourselves to the Knuth-Bendix orderings.