| Summary: | This paper is concerned with the complexity analysis of constructor term
rewrite systems and its ramification in implicit computational complexity. We
introduce a path order with multiset status, the polynomial path order POP*,
that is applicable in two related, but distinct contexts. On the one hand POP*
induces polynomial innermost runtime complexity and hence may serve as a
syntactic, and fully automatable, method to analyse the innermost runtime
complexity of term rewrite systems. On the other hand POP* provides an
order-theoretic characterisation of the polytime computable functions: the
polytime computable functions are exactly the functions computable by an
orthogonal constructor TRS compatible with POP*.
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