Nominal Unification Revisited

Abstract

Nominal unification calculates substitutions that make terms involving binders equal modulo alpha-equivalence. Although nominal unification can be seen as equivalent to Miller's higher-order pattern unification, it has properties, such as the use of first-order terms with names (as opposed to alpha-equivalence classes) and that no new names need to be generated during unification, which set it clearly apart from higher-order pattern unification. The purpose of this paper is to simplify a clunky proof from the original paper on nominal unification and to give an overview over some results about nominal unification.