Tree-Manipulating Systems and Church-Rosser Theorems

Abstract

Subtree replacement systems form a broad class of tree-manipulating systems. Systems with the “Church-Rosser property” are appropriate for evaluation or translation processes: the end result of a complete sequence of applications of the rules does not depend on the order in which the rules were applied. Theoretical and practical advantages of such flexibility are sketched. Values or meanings for trees can be defined by simple mathematical systems and then computed by the cheapest available algorithm, however intricate that algorithm may be. We derive sufficient conditions for the Church-Rosser property and discuss their applications to recursive definitions, to the lambda calculus, and to parallel programming. Only the first application is treated in detail. We extend McCarthy's recursive calculus by allowing a choice between call-by-value and call-by-name. We show that recursively defined functions are single-valued despite the nondeterminism of the evaluation algorithm. We also show that these functions solve their defining equations in a “canonical” manner.