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E-graph

Graph data structure

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Source updated June 3, 2026

In computer science, an e-graph is a data structure that stores an equivalence relation over terms of some language.

01Definition and operations

Let $\Sigma$ be a set of uninterpreted functions, where $\Sigma _{n}$ is the subset of $\Sigma$ consisting of functions of arity $n$ . Let $\mathbb {id}$ be a countable set of opaque identifiers that may be compared for equality, called e-class IDs. The application of $f\in \Sigma _{n}$ to e-class IDs $i_{1},i_{2},\ldots ,i_{n}\in \mathbb {id}$ is denoted $f(i_{1},i_{2},\ldots ,i_{n})$ and called an e-node.

The e-graph then represents equivalence classes of e-nodes, using the following data structures:

A union-find structure $U$ representing equivalence classes of e-class IDs, with the usual operations $\mathrm {find}$ , $\mathrm {add}$ and $\mathrm {merge}$ . An e-class ID $e$ is canonical if $\mathrm {find} (U,e)=e$ ; an e-node $f(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{n})$ is canonical if each $i_{j}$ is canonical ( $j$ in $1,\ldots ,n$ ).
An association of e-class IDs with sets of e-nodes, called e-classes. This consists of
- a hashcons $H$ (i.e. a mapping) from e-nodes to e-class IDs, and
- an e-class map $M$ that maps e-class IDs to e-classes, such that $M$ maps equivalent IDs to the same set of e-nodes: $\forall i,j\in \mathbb {id} ,M[i]=M[j]\Leftrightarrow \mathrm {find} (U,i)=\mathrm {find} (U,j)$

Invariants

In addition to the above structure, a valid e-graph conforms to several data structure invariants. Two e-nodes are equivalent if they are in the same e-class. The congruence invariant states that an e-graph must ensure that equivalence is closed under congruence, where two e-nodes $f(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{n}),f(j_{1},\ldots ,j_{n})$ are congruent when $\mathrm {find} (U,i_{k})=\mathrm {find} (U,j_{k}),k\in \{1,\ldots ,n\}$ . The hashcons invariant states that the hashcons maps canonical e-nodes to their e-class ID.

Operations

E-graphs expose wrappers around the $\mathrm {add}$ , $\mathrm {find}$ , and $\mathrm {merge}$ operations from the union-find that preserve the e-graph invariants. The last operation, e-matching, is described below.

Equivalent formulations

An e-graph can also be formulated as a bipartite graph $G=(N\uplus \mathrm {id} ,E)$ where

$\mathrm {id}$ is the set of e-class IDs (as above),
$N$ is the set of e-nodes, and
$E\subseteq (\mathrm {id} \times N)\cup (N\times \mathrm {id} )$ is a set of directed edges.

There is a directed edge from each e-class to each of its members, and from each e-node to each of its children.

02E-matching

Let $V$ be a set of variables and let $\mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ be the smallest set that includes the 0-arity function symbols (also called constants), includes the variables, and is closed under application of the function symbols. In other words, $\mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ is the smallest set such that $V\subset \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ , $\Sigma _{0}\subset \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ , and when $x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}\in \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ and $f\in \Sigma _{n}$ , then $f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n})\in \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ . A term containing variables is called a pattern, a term without variables is called ground.

An e-graph $E$ represents a ground term $t\in \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,\emptyset )$ if one of its e-classes represents $t$ . An e-class $C$ represents $t$ if some e-node $f(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{n})\in C$ does. An e-node $f(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{n})\in C$ represents a term $g(j_{1},\ldots ,j_{n})$ if $f=g$ and each e-class $M[i_{k}]$ represents the term $j_{k}$ ( $k$ in $1,\ldots ,n$ ).

e-matching is an operation that takes a pattern $p\in \mathrm {Term} (\Sigma ,V)$ and an e-graph $E$ , and yields all pairs $(\sigma ,C)$ where $\sigma \subset V\times \mathbb {id}$ is a substitution mapping the variables in $p$ to e-class IDs and $C\in \mathbb {id}$ is an e-class ID such that the term $\sigma (p)$ is represented by $C$ . There are several known algorithms for e-matching, the relational e-matching algorithm is based on worst-case optimal joins and is worst-case optimal.

03Extraction

Given an e-class and a cost function that maps each function symbol in $\Sigma$ to a natural number, the extraction problem is to find a ground term with minimal total cost that is represented by the given e-class. This problem is NP-hard. There is also no constant-factor approximation algorithm for this problem, which can be shown by reduction from the set cover problem. However, for graphs with bounded treewidth, there is a linear-time, fixed-parameter tractable algorithm.

04Complexity

An e-graph with n equalities can be constructed in O(n log n) time.

05Equality saturation

Equality saturation is a technique for building optimizing compilers using e-graphs. It operates by applying a set of rewrites using e-matching until the e-graph is saturated, a timeout is reached, an e-graph size limit is reached, a fixed number of iterations is exceeded, or some other halting condition is reached. After rewriting, an optimal term is extracted from the e-graph according to some cost function, usually related to AST size or performance considerations.

06Applications

E-graphs are used in automated theorem proving. They are a crucial part of modern SMT solvers such as Z3 and CVC4, where they are used to decide the empty theory by computing the congruence closure of a set of equalities, and e-matching is used to instantiate quantifiers. In DPLL(T)-based solvers that use conflict-driven clause learning (also known as non-chronological backtracking), e-graphs are extended to produce proof certificates. E-graphs are also used in the Simplify theorem prover of ESC/Java.

Equality saturation is used in specialized optimizing compilers, e.g. for deep learning, linear algebra and auto-vectorization for digital signal processors. Equality saturation has also been used for translation validation applied to the LLVM toolchain.

E-graphs have been applied to several problems in program analysis, including fuzzing, abstract interpretation, and library learning.

Watch videos about E-graphExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “E-graph”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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