On Solving Word Equations via Program Transformation

The paper presents an experiment of solving word equations via specialization of a configuration WE(R,E), where the program WE can be considered as an interpreter testing whether a composition of substitutions R produces a solution of a word equation E. Several variants of such interpreters, when specialized using a basic unfold/fold strategy, are able to decide solvability for a number of sets of the word equations with the overlapping variables.