String Rewriting Systems: Brief Introduction and Sample of Open Problems

Abstract: This document is the result of pulling together small parts of different lecture notes I have written over several decades for first-year graduate-level courses -- typically with the title Formal Methods -- which included many other topics of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. After combining these materials, I updated the references and adjusted the text to account for progress accomplished in the intervening years. The sample of open problems in the last section is a small collection of special cases that are still unresolved up until the date of this writing.