simplification and termination of strategies in rule-based languages
In rule-based languages, control of rule application can be expressed thanks to strategy constructors. The paper addresses termination of such strategy-guided evaluation. To fix ideas, we use the ELAN strategy language. We first give a sufficient criterion for ELAN-like strategies to terminate, only lying on rewrite rules involved in the strategy. We then give a simplification process of strategies, itself described by rewriting, to empower the previous criterion. This simplification can also make proofs of other program properties easier.
termination strategies rewriting rule based languages program simplification