Compression of Rewriting Systems for Termination Analysis

We adapt the TreeRePair tree compression algorithm and use it as an intermediate step in proving termination of term rewriting systems. We introduce a cost function that approximates the size of constraint systems that specify compatibility of matrix interpretations. We show how to integrate the compression algorithm with the Dependency Pairs transformation. Experiments show that compression reduces running times of constraint solvers, and thus improves the power of automated termination provers. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F.1.1 Models of Computation