System Modules

Abstract

A Maude system module specifies a rewrite theory. A rewrite theory has sorts, kinds, and operators (perhaps with frozen arguments), and can have three types of statements: equations, memberships, and rules, all of which can be conditional. Therefore, any rewrite theory has an underlying equational theory, containing the equations and memberships, plus the rules. What is the intuitive meaning of such rules? Computationally, they specify local concurrent transitions that can take place in a system if the pattern in the rule’s lefthand side matches a fragment of the system state and the rule’s condition is satisfied. In that case, the transition specified by the rule can take place, and the matched fragment of the state is transformed into the corresponding instance of the righthand side. Logically, that is, when we use rewriting logic as a logical framework to represent other logics as explained in Section 1.4, a rule specifies a logical inference rule, and rewriting steps therefore represent inference steps.