Termination of S-Expression Rewriting Systems: Lexicographic Path Ordering for Higher-Order Terms

This paper expands the termination proof techniques based on the lexicographic path ordering to term rewriting systems over varyadic terms, in which each function symbol may have more than one arity. By removing the deletion property from the usual notion of the embedding relation, we adapt Kruskal’s tree theorem to the lexicographic comparison over varyadic terms. The result presented is that finite term rewriting systems over varyadic terms are terminating whenever they are compatible with the lexicographic path order. The ordering is simple, but powerful enough to handle most of higher-order rewriting systems without λ-abstraction, expressed as S-expression rewriting systems.