Selectivity Takes Its Name From the Rule That Chooses What Survives

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Selectivity is named for the decision at the center of every reduction. Some parts of an input are necessary to preserve the behavior under investigation. Other parts can disappear. The engine discovers useful deletions by applying a rule supplied by the developer, over and over, to progressively smaller candidates.

That rule is the predicate. It might recognize a specific crash, a disagreement between two parsers or a configuration combination that produces the wrong result. The same input can reduce differently under a different predicate, because a different question makes different material relevant. The name points to that dependence. Selectivity chooses what survives according to an explicit test.

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Selectivity Takes Its Name From the Rule That Chooses What Survives