11 Nov
2009
11 Nov
'09
5:57 p.m.
On Nov 12, 2009, at 9:24 AM, Sean Leather wrote:
Is there a name for the following concept? [Generalising from (Int, Char) -> (Char, Int) (Char, Int) -> (Int, Char) to (x, y ) -> (y, x )]
It's the "least specific generalisation", also known as anti- unification. (Because unification finds the most general specialisation.) As far as I know, it originated in this paper: Gordon D. Plotkin. A Note on Inductive Generalization. In B. Meltzer and D. Michie, editors, Machine Intelligence, volume 5, pages 153-163. Elsevier North-Holland, New York, 1970. More precisely, with the type constraints, it's sorted anti-unification. http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/dfkidok/publications/TM/94/04/abstract.html might be worth a look.