15-815 Automated Theorem Proving
Lecture 10: Unification

The principal new difficulty in proof search in the presence of quantifiers is how to pick terms for their instantiation. The usual solution is to postpone that choice and use free variables. Constraints that search places on the free variables are then solved by a process called unification.

We show how unification is related to proof search, and give an algorithm for solving unification problems. Even though unification is motivated by backward search, it is also important for forward search in the style of the inverse method or resolution.


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Frank Pfenning