first-order unification

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Summary

Unification is a procedure which takes two symbolic expressions containing variables, and returns a substitution to the variables which makes the expressions identical. It is a key component of first-order theorem provers and type inference systems.

Context

This concept has the prerequisites:

Goals

  • Know what the unification procedure is and what the output is.
  • Be able to simulate it on simple examples.
  • What is the occurs check, why is it needed, and why does it increase the complexity of the algorithm?
  • Why do variables sometimes need to be renamed before performing unification?
  • What does it mean for one unifier to be more general than another, and why does one desire the most general unifier?

See also

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