(of a transitive binary relation R) A relation R* defined as follows:
if there exists a sequence
such that
n > 0 and
It follows from the transitivity property that
and that
R is a subset of
R*.
Reflexive closure is similar to transitive closure but includes the possibility that n = 0. Transitive and reflexive closures play important roles in parsing and compiling techniques and in finding paths in graphs.