Similarity-based Unification

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Formato, Ferrante | Gerla, Giangiacomo | Sessa, Maria I.

Affiliations: DMI University of Salerno, 84081 Baronissi (SA), Italy. formato@dia.unisa.it gerla@matna2.dma.unina.it mis@dia.unisa.it

Note: [] Address for correspondence: DMI University of Salerno, 84081 Baronissi (SA), Italy

Abstract: Unification plays a central rule in Logic Programming. We ”soften” the unification process by admitting that two first order expressions can be ”similar” up to a certain degree and not necessarly identical. An extension of the classical unification theory is proposed accordingly. Indeed, in our approach, inspirated by the unification algorithm of Martelli-Montanari, the systems of equations go through a series of ”sound” transformations until a solvable form is found yielding a substitution that is proved to be a most general extended unifier for the given system of equations.

DOI: 10.3233/FI-2000-41402

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 393-414, 2000