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From: Tim.UPenn%Rand-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: pattern matchers
Message-ID: <13838@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Nov-83 10:53:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13838
Posted: Wed Nov 16 10:53:00 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Nov-83 02:23:43 EST
Lines: 15

From:  Tim Finin <Tim.UPenn@Rand-Relay>

     From: Stanley T. Shebs <SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA>
     Subject: Pattern Matchers
     ... My next puzzle is about pattern matchers.  Has anyone looked carefully
     at the notion of a "non-failing" pattern matcher?  By that I mean one that
     never or almost never rejects things as non-matching. ...

There is a long history of matchers which can be asked to "force" a match.
In this mode, the matcher is given two objects and returns a description
of what things would have to be true for the two objects to match.  Two such
matchers come immediately to my mind - see "How can MERLIN Understand?" by
Moore and Newell in Gregg (ed), Knowledge and Cognition, 1973, and also
"An Overview of KRL, A Knowledge Representation Language" by Bobrow and
Winograd (which appeared in the AI Journal, I believe, in 76 or 77).