We show that non-determinism simplifies coding certain problems
into programs.
We define a non-confluent, but well-behaved class of
rewrite systems for supporting non-deterministic computations
in functional logic programming.
We show the benefits of using this class on a few examples.
We define a narrowing strategy for this class of systems
and prove that our strategy is sound, complete, and optimal,
modulo non-deterministic choices, for appropriate definitions
of these concepts.
We compare our strategy with related work and show that our
overall approach is fully compatible with the current proposal
of a universal, broad-based functional logic language.