Uninterpreted function

rdf:langString Uninterpreted function

rdf:langString May 2014

rdf:langString Indicate about solving which problem in free theories the sentence is supposed to speak. E.g. to solve the satisfiability problem of conjunctions of equations, the Martelli-Montanari syntactic unification algorithm suffices, neither common subexpressions nor congruence closures are needed. Maybe, satisfiability of arbitrary boolean combinations of equations is meant?

rdf:langString In mathematical logic, an uninterpreted function or function symbol is one that has no other property than its name and n-ary form. Function symbols are used, together with constants and variables, to form terms. The theory of uninterpreted functions is also sometimes called the free theory, because it is freely generated, and thus a free object, or the empty theory, being the theory having an empty set of sentences (in analogy to an initial algebra). Theories with a non-empty set of equations are known as equational theories. The satisfiability problem for free theories is solved by syntactic unification; algorithms for the latter are used by interpreters for various computer languages, such as Prolog. Syntactic unification is also used in algorithms for the satisfiability problem for certain other equational theories, see Unification (computer science).