Developments in the rewriting calculus

The theory of developments, originally developed for the Lambda calculus, has been successfully adapted to several other computational paradigms, like first- and higher-order term rewrite system. The main desirable results on developments are the fact that the complete development of a finite set of redexes always terminates (FD) and the fact that, for a given initial term, all complete developments of a fixed set of redexes end with the same term (FD!). Following the ideas in the Lambda calculus, in this paper, we present a notion of development and the proofs of theorems FD and FD! for the rewriting calculus, a framework embedding Lambda calculus and rewriting capabilities, by allowing abstraction not only on variables but also on patterns. As an additional contribution, a new proof of the confluence property for the rewriting calculus, is obtained as a consequence of the results on developments