The static dependency pair method is a method for proving the termination of higher-order rewrite systemsà la Nipkow. It combines the dependency pair method introduced for first-order rewrite systems with the notion of strong computability introduced for typed λ-calculi. Argument filterings and usable rules are two important methods of the dependency pair framework used by current state-of-the-art first-order automated termination provers. In this paper, we extend the class of higher-order systems on which the static dependency pair method can be applied. Then, we extend argument filterings and usable rules to higher-order rewriting, hence providing the basis for a powerful automated termination prover for higher-order rewrite systems.

SUMMARYHigher-order rewrite systems (HRSs) and simply-typed term rewriting systems (STRSs) are computational models of functional programs. We recently proposed an extremely powerful method, the static dependency pair method, which is based on the notion of strong computability, in order to prove termination in STRSs. In this paper, we extend the method to HRSs. Since HRSs include λ-abstraction but STRSs do not, we restructure the static dependency pair method to allow λ-abstraction, and show that the static dependency pair method also works well on HRSs without new restrictions.

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This paper explores how to extend the dependency pair technique for proving termination of higher-order rewrite systems. In the first order case, the termination of term rewriting systems are proved by showing the non-existence of an infinite R-chain of the dependency pairs. However, the termination and the non-existence of an infinite R-chain do not coincide in the higher-order case. We introduce a new notion of dependency forest that characterize infinite reductions and infinite R-chains, and show that the termination property of higher-order rewrite systems R can be checked by showing the non-existence of an infinite R-chain, if R is strongly linear or non-nested.

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