A new method for proving confluence on abstract reduction systems --- Confluence of non-E-overlapping weakly-shallow TRSs ---

Abstract

This paper proposes a new method for proving the confluence of an abstract reduction system (ARS) by clarifying the sufficient conditions, called compatibility and edge commutativity, for expanding a given finite sub-ARS into a confluent one by adding rewrite edges. This method can be regarded as an extension of our earlier work, which showed that a weakly non-overlapping, shallow, and non-collapsing term rewriting system (TRS) is confluent. Furthermore, we apply our method to demonstrate that a non-$E$-overlapping and weakly shallow TRS is confluent. Here, a term is weakly shallow if each defined function symbol occurs either at the root or in the ground subterms, and a TRS is weakly shallow if both sides of all its rewrite rules are weakly shallow. This drops the non-collapsing condition assumed in our previous work on weakly shallow TRSs. Moreover, since a weakly shallow TRS is non-$E$-overlapping whenever it is non-$ω$-overlapping, and the latter property is decidable, we also obtain a decidable sufficient condition for confluence: non-$ω$-overlapping and weakly shallow TRSs are confluent.