A term-rewriting characterization of PSPACE

Abstract

Isabel Oitavem has introduced a term rewriting system (TRS) which captures the class FPS of polynomial-space computable functions. We propose an alternative TRS for FPS. As a consequence, it is obtained that FPS is the smallest class containing certain initial functions and closed under specific operations. It turns out that our characterization is relatively simple and suggests an uniform approach to the space-complexity.