Admissible Graph Rewriting and Narrowing

We address the problem of graph rewriting and narrowing as the underlying operational semantics of rule-based programming languages. We propose new optimal graph rewriting and narrowing strategies in the setting of orthogonal constructor-based graph rewriting systems. For this purpose, we first characterize a subset of graphs, called admissible graphs. A graph is admissible if none of its defined operations belongs to a cycle. We then prove the confluence, as well as the confluence modulo bisimilarity (unraveling), of the admissible graph rewriting relation. Afterwards, we define a sequential graph rewriting strategy by using Antoy’s definitional trees. We show that the resulting strategy computes only needed redexes and develops optimal derivations w.r.t. the number of steps. Finally, we tackle the graph narrowing relation over admissible graphs and propose a sequential narrowing strategy which computes independent solutions and develops shorter derivations than most general graph narrowing.