Hyperedge Replacement: Grammars and Languages

The area of graph grammars is theoretically attractive andwell motivated byvarious applications. More than 20 yearsago, the concept of graph grammars was introduced by A.Rosenfeld as a formulation of some problems in patternrecognition and image processing, as well as by H.J.Schneider as a method for data type specification. Withingraph-grammar theory one maydistinguish the set-theoreticalapproach, the algebraic approach, and the logical approach.These approaches differ in the method in which graphreplacement is described. Specific approaches,node replacement and hyperedge replacement, concern thebasic units of a hypergraph, nodes and hyperedges.This monograph is mainly concerned with thehyperedge-replacement approach. Hyperedge-replacementgrammars are introduced as a device for generatinghypergraph languages including graph languages and stringlanguages. The concept combines a context-free rewritingwith a comparatively large generative power. The volumeincludes a foreword by H. Ehrig.