Transforming Cycle Rewriting into String Rewriting

We present new techniques to prove termination of cycle rewriting, that is, string rewriting on cycles, which are strings in which the start and end are connected. Our main technique is to transform cycle rewriting into string rewriting and then apply state of the art techniques to prove termination of the string rewrite system. We present three such transformations, and prove for all of them that they are sound and complete. Apart from this transformational approach, we extend the use of matrix interpretations as was studied before. We present several experiments showing that often our new techniques succeed where earlier techniques fail. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F.4.2 Grammars and other rewriting systems