SPASS FAQ

QUESTIONS

Q: How can I get an answer substitution?

ANSWERS

A: There are no meta predicates in SPASS available. Hence, this

functionality is not directly supported. However it can be achieved
by a trick. The idea is to add a new literal to the conjecture
clause that carries the substitution and will definitely be resolved
away in the final step of the proof. For example: let x be the
variable where we are interested in the subsitution. Let x occur in
the single conjecture clause C. Then extend this clause to C,P(x,a,y)
and add the clause -P(z,u,b), where P is new, and a,b are constants.
Furthermore make P a minimal predicate using a set_DomPred declaration
(see the SPASS man page). This will force that the final step in the
proof is the one that eliminates the P literal and the x will be
instantiated accordingly. To make this work it may be necessary to turn
off certain reduction rules of SPASS. To get it rid of that, a trick is
to extend all predicates in C by a further argument with the variable y
and all other occurrences of these predicate with fresh variables.

AUTHORS

Thomas Hillenbrand, Dalibor Topic and Christoph Weidenbach

Contact : Thomas Hillenbrand <hillen@mpi-sb.mpg.de> Christoph Weidenbach
<weidenb@mpi-sb.mpg.de>