Hydra Battles and AC Termination

Abstract: We present a new encoding of the Battle of Hercules and Hydra as a rewrite system with AC symbols. Unlike earlier term rewriting encodings, it faithfully models any strategy of Hercules to beat Hydra. To prove the termination of our encoding, we employ type introduction in connection with many-sorted semantic labeling for AC rewriting and AC-MPO, a new AC compatible reduction order that can be seen as a much weakened version of AC-RPO.