Proving inductive validity of constrained inequalities
Takahiro Nagao, Naoki Nishida · 2016
Rewriting induction (RI) frameworks consist of inference rules to prove equations to be inductive theorems of a given term rewriting system, i.e., to be inductively valid w.r.t. reduction of the given system. To prove inductive validity of inequalities within such frameworks, one may reduce inequalities to equations. However, it is often hard to prove inductive validity of such reduced equations within the existing RI frameworks due to their indirect handling of inequalities. In this paper, we adapt the notion of inductive theorems to inequalities and propose an RI framework for directly proving inductive validity of inequalities of constrained term rewriting systems. Within the framework, we handle inequalities that may contain function symbols defined in a given rewriting system but not necessarily interpreted by the built-in semantics. Direct handling of inequalities facilitates the utilization of transitivity of magnitude relations via inequalities obtained as induction hypotheses. Our approach succeeds in proving inductive validity of some inequalities that are hard to verify within the existing RI frameworks for equations.