Summary: Decidability of Systems of Set Constraints
with Negative Constraints \Lambda
Alexander Aiken y
University of California, Berkeley
aiken@cs.berkeley.edu
Dexter Kozen z
Cornell University
kozen@cs.cornell.edu
Ed Wimmers x
IBM Almaden Research Center
wimmers@almaden.ibm.com
Abstract
Set constraints are relations between sets of terms. They have been
used extensively in various applications in program analysis and type
inference. Recently, several algorithms for solving general systems
of positive set constraints have appeared. In this paper we consider
systems of mixed positive and negative constraints, which are consid­
erably more expressive than positive constraints alone. We show that
it is decidable whether a given such system has a solution. The proof
involves a reduction to a number­theoretic decision problem that may

Source: Aiken, Alex - Department of Computer Science, Stanford University
Kozen, Dexter - Department of Computer Science, Cornell University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences