Relational Rippling: A General Approach

Abstract

We propose a new version of rippling, called relational rippling. Rippling is a heuristic for guiding proof search, especially in the step cases of inductive proofs. Relational rippling is designed for representations in which value passing is by shared existential variables, as opposed to function nesting. Thus relational rippling can be used to guide reasoning about logic programs or circuits represented as relations. We give an informal motivation and introduction to relational rippling. More details, including formal definitions and termination proofs can be found in the longer version of this paper, [ Bundy and Lombart, 1995 ] . Keywords: Rippling, heuristics, inductive proof, automated theorem proving, logic program transformation. 1 Introduction Rippling is a heuristic technique for controlling search during automatic theorem proving, [ Bundy et al., 1993 ] . It was originally developed for inductive theorem proving. Its role is to manipulate the induction conclusion to make...