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#### On the decision complexity of the bounded theories of trees

##### MPS-Authors
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Vorobyov,  Sergei
Programming Logics, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society;

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##### Citation

Vorobyov, S.(1996). On the decision complexity of the bounded theories of trees (MPI-I-1996-2-008). Saarbrücken: Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik.

Cite as: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0014-9FDF-9
##### Abstract
The theory of finite trees is the full first-order theory of equality in the Herbrand universe (the set of ground terms) over a functional signature containing non-unary function symbols and constants. Albeit decidable, this theory turns out to be of non-elementary complexity [Vorobyov CADE'96]. To overcome the intractability of the theory of finite trees, we introduce in this paper the bounded theory of finite trees. This theory replaces the usual equality $=$, interpreted as identity, with the infinite family of approximate equalities down to a fixed given depth'' $\{=^d\}_{d\in\omega}$, with $d$ written in binary, and $s=^dt$ meaning that the ground terms $s$ and $t$ coincide if all their branches longer than $d$ are cut off. By using a refinement of Ferrante-Rackoff's complexity-tailored Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games, we demonstrate that the bounded theory of finite trees can be decided within linear double exponential space $2^{2^{cn}}$ ($n$ is the length of input) for some constant $c>0$.