Abstract
The nominal datatype package implements an infrastructure in Isabelle/HOL for defining languages involving binders and for reasoning conveniently about alpha-equivalence classes. Pitts stated some general conditions under which functions over alpha-equivalence classes can be defined by a form of structural recursion and gave a clever proof for the existence of a primitive-recursion combinator. We give a version of this proof that works directly over nominal datatypes and does not rely upon auxiliary constructions. We further introduce proving tools and a heuristic that made the automation of our proof tractable. This automation is an essential prerequisite for the nominal datatype package to become useful.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barendregt, H.: The L ambda Calculus: I ts Syntax and S emantics. Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. 103. North-Holland, Amsterdam (1981)
Berghofer, S., Wenzel, M.: Inductive Datatypes in HOL - Lessons Learned in Formal-Logic Engineering. In: Bertot, Y., Dowek, G., Hirschowitz, A., Paulin, C., Théry, L. (eds.) TPHOLs 1999. LNCS, vol. 1690, pp. 19–36. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Gabbay, M.J., Pitts, A.M.: A New Approach to Abstract Syntax Involving Binders. In: Logic in Computer Science, pp. 214–224. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1999)
Gordon, M.: From LCF to HOL: a short history. In: Plotkin, G., Stirling, C.P., Tofte, M. (eds.) Proof, Language, and Interaction, pp. 169–186. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Homeier, P.: A Design Structure for Higher Order Quotients. In: Hurd, J., Melham, T. (eds.) TPHOLs 2005. LNCS, vol. 3603, pp. 130–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Melham, T.: Automating Recursive Type Definitions in Higher Order Logic. In: Birtwistle, G., Subrahmanyam, P.A. (eds.) Current Trends in Hardware Verification and Automated Theorem Proving, pp. 341–386. Springer, Heidelberg (1989)
Pitts, A.M.: Nominal Logic, A First Order Theory of Names and Binding. Information and Computation 186, 165–193 (2003)
Pitts, A.M.: Alpha-Structural Recursion and Induction (Extended Abstract). In: Hurd, J., Melham, T. (eds.) TPHOLs 2005. LNCS, vol. 3603, pp. 17–34. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Pitts, A.M.: Alpha-Structural Recursion and Induction. Journal of the ACM (to appear, 200X)
Urban, C., Norrish, M.: A Formal Treatment of the Barendregt Variable Convention in Rule Inductions. In: Proc. of the 3rd International ACM Workshop on Mechanized Reasoning about Languages with Variable Binding and Names, pp. 25–32 (2005)
Urban, C., Tasson, C.: Nominal Techniques in Isabelle/HOL. In: Nieuwenhuis, R. (ed.) CADE 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3632, pp. 38–53. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Wenzel, M.: Using Axiomatic Type Classes in Isabelle. Manual in the Isabelle distribution
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Urban, C., Berghofer, S. (2006). A Recursion Combinator for Nominal Datatypes Implemented in Isabelle/HOL. In: Furbach, U., Shankar, N. (eds) Automated Reasoning. IJCAR 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4130. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11814771_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11814771_41
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-37187-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-37188-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)