How do inductive proposition work in Coq? - coq

I was going through IndProp in software foundations and Adam Chlipala's chapter 4 book and I was having difficulties understanding inductive propositions.
For the sake of a running example, lets use:
Inductive ev : nat -> Prop :=
| ev_0 : ev 0
| ev_SS : forall n : nat, ev n -> ev (S (S n)).
I think I do understand "normal" types using Set like:
Inductive nat : Set :=
| O : nat
| S : nat -> nat.
and things like O just return the single object of type nat and S O is taking an object of type nat and returning another different one of the same type nat. By different object I guess I mean they have different values.
What I am confused is on how exactly the constructors for inductive props differ from inductive types Set. For Set it seems they just behave as function, a function that take values and return more values of that type. But for Inductive Propositions I am having a hard time figuring out what they do.
For example take ev_0 as a simple example. I assume that is the name for the propositional object (value) ev 0. Since it's by itself ev 0 must be a Prop a proposition. But what exactly makes it true? If its a proposition it could be false I assume. I guess the induction is confusing me. ev is the "function that returns objects of some type (proposition)", so ev 0 is just a proposition, but we have not said what ev 0 should mean (unlike in my definition of natural number the base case is clear what its doing). In python I would expect to see
n == 0: return True
or something for the base case. But in this case it seems circular pointing to itself and not to something like True. I know there is a foundational misconception I have but I don't know what exactly what I am not understanding.
Also whats confusing me is the naming. In the nat the name O was crucial for building/constructing objects. But in the inductive definition ev_0 seems to be more like a label/pointer to the real value ev 0. So I'd assume ev_SS == ev_0 -? ev 2 doesn't really make sense but I don't know why. How are the labels here acting differently from the labels in the inductive types using set?
For ev_SS thats even more confusing. Since I don't know what labels are doing of course thats confusing me but look how this is pointing:
forall n : nat, ev n -> ev (S (S n))
so given a natural number n I assume it returns the proposition ev n -> ev (S (S n)) (I am assuming forall n : nat is not part of the proposition object and its just there to indicate when the constructer that returns propositions works). So forall n : nat, ev n -> ev (S (S n)) isn't really a proposition but ev n -> ev (S (S n)).
Can someone help me clarify how inductive proposition type really work in Coq?
Note I don't truly understand the difference between Set vs Type but I believe that would be a whole other post by itself.
Some more comments:
I was playing around with this some more and did:
Check ev_SS
and to my surprise got:
ev_SS
: forall n : nat, ev n -> ev (S (S n))
I think this is unexpected because I didn't expect that the type of ev_SS (unless I am misunderstanding what Check is suppose to do) would be the definition of the function itself. I thought that ev_SS was a constructor so in my mind I thought that would do a mapping in this case nat -> Prop so of course thats the type I expected.

So, first, it is normal for you to be confused by this, but it might be simpler than what you think!
There are two distinct concepts you are confused about, so let's take them one at a time. First, you mention that ev 0 is a proposition, and wonder what makes it true. You will learn at some point that propositions and types are the same things, and the distinction between Prop and Set and Type is not that those things are different inherently.
So, when you define the type (or proposition) nat, you are creating a new type, and describing what values exist within it. You declare that there is a value O, that is a nat. And you declare that there is a parameterized value S, that is a nat, when passed a nat.
In the same way, when you define the type (or proposition) ev, you are creating a new type (well, it's actually a family of types indexed by values of type nat), and describing what values exist within those ev types. You declare that there is a value ev_0, that is an ev 0. And you declare that there is a parameterized value ev_SS, that is an ev (S (S n)), when passed a n : nat and an ev n.
So you made the proposition be true by having ways of creating values within it. You can also define a false proposition by having no constructors, or having constructors that can never be called:
Inductive MyFalse1 := . (* no constructor! *)
Inductive MyFalse2 :=
| TryToConstructMe : False -> MyFalse2
| ThisWontWorkEither : 0 = 1 -> MyFalse2
.
I have declared two now types (or proposition), but there's no way to witness them because they either have no constructors, or no way to ever call those constructors.
Now regarding the naming of things, ev_0, ev_SS, O, and S are all the same kind of entity: a constructor. I'm not sure why you think that ev_0 is a pointer to a value ev 0.
There is no meaning to assign to ev n as a proposition, other than it's a proposition that may be true if there is a way to construct a value with type ev n, and may be false if there is no way to construct a value with type ev n.
However, note that ev n has been carefully crafted to be inhabited for exactly those ns that are even, and to be uninhabited for exactly those ns that are odd. It's in this sense that ev captures a proposition. If you receive a value of type ev n, it essentially asserts that n is an even number, because the type ev n only contains inhabitants for even values:
ev 0 contains 1 inhabitant (ev_0)
ev 1 contains 0 inhabitant
ev 2 contains 1 inhabitant (ev_SS 0 ev_0)
ev 3 contains 0 inhabitant
ev 4 contains 1 inhabitant (ev_SS 2 (ev_SS 0 ev_0))
etc.
Finally, for the difference between Set, Prop, and Type, these are all universes within which you can create inductive types, but they come with certain restrictions.
Prop enables an optimization for code generation. It's essentially a way for you, the programmer, to mark some type as being only used for verification purposes, never used for computation purposes. As a result, the type-checker will force you to never compute on proofs within the Prop universe, and the code generation will know that it can throw away those proofs as they don't participate in computational behavior.
Set is just a restriction of Prop to avoid dealing with universe levels. You don't really need to understand this until later in your learning process.
You should really try to not think of Prop as being a magical thing different than Set.
The following might help you: we could rewrite the definitions of nat and ev, in a completely equivalent way, as:
Inductive nat1 : Set :=
| O : nat1
| S : nat1 -> nat1
.
(* is the same as *)
Inductive nat1 : Set :=
| O : nat1
| S : forall (n : nat1), nat1
.
(* and *)
Inductive ev : nat -> Prop :=
| ev_0 : ev 0
| ev_SS : forall (n : nat), ev n -> ev (S (S n))
.
(* is the same as *)
Inductive ev : nat -> Prop :=
| ev_0 : ev 0
| ev_SS : forall (n : nat) (e : ev n), ev (S (S n))
.
Any time you see a type looking like a -> b, it's really a short-hand for forall (_ : a), b, that is, we expect an input of type a, and return an output of type b.
The reason why we write forall (n : nat) in ev_SS is that we have to give a name to the first argument, because the type of the second argument will depend on it (the second argument has type ev n).

If you replace Prop with Set then you say you understand the definition:
Inductive ev' : nat -> Set :=
| ev_0' : ev' 0
| ev_SS' : forall n : nat, ev' n -> ev' (S (S n)).
For every n : nat we think of ev' n as a type which has some elements, or perhaps none. Because this is an inductive definition, we can tell what the elements of ev' 0 are: the only element is ev_0' (or to be more precise, every closed term of type ev' 0 computes to ev_0;). There are no elements of ev_0 1, but there is an element of ev 2', namely ev_SS' 0 ev_0'. In fact, a little bit of thinking shows that ev n is either empty or a singleton, depending on whether n is even or odd.
It's exactly the same when we switch from Set to Prop, except that the reading is different: Set is a (large) type of types, Prop is also a type of types (they are universes). Each element of Prop is a type (but we prefer to call it a "proposition") which has some elements (but we prefer to call them "proofs"). So consider this:
Inductive ev : nat -> Prop :=
| ev_0 : ev 0
| ev_SS : forall n : nat, ev n -> ev (S (S n)).
For every n : nat, we think of ev n as the statement that n has the property ev, whatever that property might be. For any give n, there may be a proof of ev n, in which case n has the property ev, or there may be no such proof, in which case n does not have the property ev. Because this is an inductive definition, we can tell what the proofs of ev_0 are: they all compute to ev_0'. There are no proofs of ev_0 1, but there is a proof of ev 2, namely ev_SS 0 ev_0. In fact, a little bit of thinking shows that ev n has a proof if, and only if, n is even. We now understand that ev is the property of being "even".
This is knows as "propositions as types".
We observed that ev' 0 contains just one element ev_0'. The type unit also contains just one element tt. Does this mean that ev' 0 and unit are equal? No, but they are equivalent because we can provide functions ev' 0 -> unit and unit -> ev' 0 which are inverses of each other.
We can ask the same question about ev 0: is it equal to True? No, but they are equivalent because we can prove the implications ev 0 -> True and True -> ev' 0.
One starts to wonder what the difference between Prop and Set is. For a type P : Prop all of its elements are considered equal, i.e., Coq does not allow us to distinguish between them. (This is a bit of a pedagocical lie, because in reality Coq is agnostic about whether all the element of P are considered equal, but perhaps it's better not to get into this right now.)

Related

A simple case of universe inconsistency

I can define the following inductive type:
Inductive T : Type -> Type :=
| c1 : forall (A : Type), A -> T A
| c2 : T unit.
But then the command Check (c1 (T nat)) fails with the message: The term T nat has type Type#{max(Set, Top.3+1)} while it is expected to have type Type#{Top.3} (universe inconsistency).
How can I tweak the above inductive definition so that c1 (T nat) does not cause a universe inconsistency, and without setting universe polymorphism on?
The following works, but I would prefer a solution without adding equality:
Inductive T (A : Type) : Type :=
| c1 : A -> T A
| c2' : A = unit -> T A.
Definition c2 : T unit := c2' unit eq_refl.
Check (c1 (T nat)).
(*
c1 (T nat)
: T nat -> T (T nat)
*)
Let me first answer the question of why we get the universe inconsistency in the first place.
Universe inconsistencies are the errors that Coq reports to avoid proofs of False via Russell's paradox, which results from considering the set of all sets which do not contain themselves.
There's a variant which is more convenient to formalize in type theory called Hurken's Paradox; see Coq.Logic.Hurkens for more details. There is a specialization of Hurken's paradox which proves that no type can retract to a smaller type. That is, given
U := Type#{u}
A : U
down : U -> A
up : A -> U
up_down : forall (X:U), up (down X) = X
we can prove False.
This is almost exactly the setup of your Inductive type. Annotating your type with universes, you start with
Inductive T : Type#{i} -> Type#{j} :=
| c1 : forall (A : Type#{i}), A -> T A
| c2 : T unit.
Note that we can invert this inductive; we may write
Definition c1' (A : Type#{i}) (v : T A) : A
:= match v with
| c1 A x => x
| c2 => tt
end.
Lemma c1'_c1 (A : Type#{i}) : forall v, c1' A (c1 A v) = v.
Proof. reflexivity. Qed.
Suppose, for a moment, that c1 (T nat) typechecked. Since T nat : Type#{j}, this would require j <= i. If it gave us that j < i, then we would be set. We could write c1 Type#{j}. And this is exactly the setup for the variant of Hurken's that I mentioned above! We could define
u = j
U := Type#{j}
A := T Type#{j}
down : U -> A := c1 Type#{j}
up : A -> U := c1' Type#{j}
up_down := c1'_c1 Type#{j}
and hence prove False.
Coq needs to implement a rule for avoiding this paradox. As described here, the rule is that for each (non-parameter) argument to a constructor of an inductive, if the type of the argument has a sort in universe u, then the universe of the inductive is constrained to be >= u. In this case, this is stricter than Coq needs to be. As mentioned by SkySkimmer here, Coq could recognize arguments which appear directly in locations which are indices of the inductive, and disregard those in the same way that it disregards parameters.
So, to finally answer your question, I believe the following are your only options:
You can Set Universe Polymorphism so that in T (T nat), your two Ts take different universe arguments. (Equivalently, you can write Polymorphic Inductive.)
You can take advantage of how Coq treats parameters of inductive types specially, which mandates using equality in your case. (The requirement of using equality is a general property of going from indexed inductive types to parameterized inductives types---from moving arguments from after the : to before it.)
You can pass Coq the flag -type-in-type to entirely disable universe checking.
You can fix bug #7929, which I reported as part of digging into this question, to make Coq handle arguments of constructors which appear in index-position in the inductive in the same way it handles parameters of inductive types.
(You can find another edge case of the system, and manage to trick Coq into ignoring the universes you want to slip past it, and probably find a proof of False in the process. (Possibly involving module subtyping, see, e.g., this recent bug in modules with universes.))

Proving equality between instances of dependent types

When attempting to formalize the class which corresponds to an algebraic structure (for example the class of all monoids), a natural design is to create a type monoid (a:Type) as a product type which models all the required fields (an element e:a, an operator app : a -> a -> a, proofs that the monoid laws are satisfied etc.). In doing so, we are creating a map monoid: Type -> Type. A possible drawback of this approach is that given a monoid m:monoid a (a monoid with support type a) and m':monoid b (a monoid wih support type b), we cannot even write the equality m = m' (let alone prove it) because it is ill-typed. An alternative design would be to create a type monoid where the support type is just another field a:Type, so that given m m':monoid, it is always meaningful to ask whether m = m'. Somehow, one would like to argue that if m and m' have the same supports (a m = a m) and the operators are equals (app m = app m', which may be achieved thanks to some extensional equality axiom), and that the proof fields do not matter (because we have some proof irrelevance axiom) etc. , then m = m'. Unfortunately, we can't event express the equality app m = app m' because it is ill-typed...
To simplify the problem, suppose we have:
Inductive myType : Type :=
| make : forall (a:Type), a -> myType.
.
I would like to have results of the form:
forall (a b:Type) (x:a) (y:b), a = b -> x = y -> make a x = make b y.
This statement is ill-typed so we can't have it.
I may have axioms allowing me to prove that two types a and b are same, and I may be able to show that x and y are indeed the same too, but I want to have a tool allowing me to conclude that make a x = make b y. Any suggestion is welcome.
A low-tech way to prove this is to insert a manual type-cast, using the provided equality. That is, instead of having an assumption x = y, you have an assumption (CAST q x) = y. Below I explicitly write the cast as a match, but you could also make it look nicer by defining a function to do it.
Inductive myType : Type :=
| make : forall (a:Type), a -> myType.
Lemma ex : forall (a b:Type) (x:a) (y:b) (q: a = b), (match q in _ = T return T with eq_refl => x end) = y -> make a x = make b y.
Proof.
destruct q.
intros q.
congruence.
Qed.
There is a nicer way to hide most of this machinery by using "heterogenous equality", also known as JMeq. I recommend the Equality chapter of CPDT for a detailed introduction. Your example becomes
Require Import Coq.Logic.JMeq.
Infix "==" := JMeq (at level 70, no associativity).
Inductive myType : Type :=
| make : forall (a:Type), a -> myType.
Lemma ex : forall (a b:Type) (x:a) (y:b), a = b -> x == y -> make a x = make b y.
Proof.
intros.
rewrite H0.
reflexivity.
Qed.
In general, although this particular theorem can be proved without axioms, if you do the formalization in this style you are likely to encounter goals that can not be proven in Coq without axioms about equality. In particular, injectivity for this kind of dependent records is not provable. The JMEq library will automatically use an axiom JMeq_eq about heterogeneous equality, which makes it quite convenient.

What is difference between `destruct` and `case_eq` tactics in Coq?

I understood destruct as it breaks an inductive definition into its constructors. I recently saw case_eq and I couldn't understand what it does differently?
1 subgoals
n : nat
k : nat
m : M.t nat
H : match M.find (elt:=nat) n m with
| Some _ => true
| None => false
end = true
______________________________________(1/1)
cc n (M.add k k m) = true
In the above context, if I do destruct M.find n m it breaks H into true and false whereas case_eq (M.find n m) leaves H intact and adds separate proposition M.find (elt:=nat) n m = Some v, which I can rewrite to get same effect as destruct.
Can someone please explain me the difference between the two tactics and when which one should be used?
The first basic tactic in the family of destruct and case_eq is called case. This tactic modifies only the conclusion. When you type case A and A has a type T which is inductive, the system replaces A in the goal's conclusion by instances of all the constructors of type T, adding universal quantifications for the arguments of these constructors, if needed. This creates as many goals as there are constructors in type T. The formula A disappears from the goal and if there is any information about A in an hypothesis, the link between this information and all the new constructors that replace it in the conclusion gets lost. In spite of this, case is an important primitive tactic.
Loosing the link between information in the hypotheses and instances of A in the conclusion is a big problem in practice, so developers came up with two solutions: case_eq and destruct.
Personnally, when writing the Coq'Art book, I proposed that we write a simple tactic on top of case that keeps a link between A and the various constructor instances in the form of an equality. This is the tactic now called case_eq. It does the same thing as case but adds an extra implication in the goal, where the premise of the implication is an equality of the form A = ... and where ... is an instance of each constructor.
At about the same time, the tactic destruct was proposed. Instead of limiting the effect of replacement in the goal's conclusion, destruct replaces all instances of A appearing in the hypotheses with instances of constructors of type T. In a sense, this is cleaner because it avoids relying on the extra concept of equality, but it is still incomplete because the expression A may be a compound expression f B, and if B appears in the hypothesis but not f B the link between A and B will still be lost.
Illustration
Definition my_pred (n : nat) := match n with 0 => 0 | S p => p end.
Lemma example n : n <= 1 -> my_pred n <= 0.
Proof.
case_eq (my_pred n).
Gives the two goals
------------------
n <= 1 -> my_pred n = 0 -> 0 <= 0
and
------------------
forall p, my_pred n = S p -> n <= 1 -> S p <= 0
the extra equality is very useful here.
In this question I suggested that the developer use case_eq (a == b) when (a == b) has type bool because this type is inductive and not very informative (constructors have no argument). But when (a == b) has type {a = b}+{a <> b} (which is the case for the string_dec function) the constructors have arguments that are proofs of interesting properties and the extra universal quantification for the arguments of the constructors are enough to give the relevant information, in this case a = b in a first goal and a <> b in a second goal.

Inductive definition for family of types

I have been struggling on this for a while now. I have an inductive type:
Definition char := nat.
Definition string := list char.
Inductive Exp : Set :=
| Lit : char -> Exp
| And : Exp -> Exp -> Exp
| Or : Exp -> Exp -> Exp
| Many: Exp -> Exp
from which I define a family of types inductively:
Inductive Language : Exp -> Set :=
| LangLit : forall c:char, Language (Lit c)
| LangAnd : forall r1 r2: Exp, Language(r1) -> Language(r2) -> Language(And r1 r2)
| LangOrLeft : forall r1 r2: Exp, Language(r1) -> Language(Or r1 r2)
| LangOrRight : forall r1 r2: Exp, Language(r2) -> Language(Or r1 r2)
| LangEmpty : forall r: Exp, Language (Many r)
| LangMany : forall r: Exp, Language (Many r) -> Language r -> Language (Many r).
The rational here is that given a regular expression r:Exp I am attempting to represent the language associated with r as a type Language r, and I am doing so with a single inductive definition.
I would like to prove:
Lemma L1 : forall (c:char)(x:Language (Lit c)),
x = LangLit c.
(In other words, the type Language (Lit c) has only one element, i.e. the language of the regular expression 'c' is made of the single string "c". Of course I need to define some semantics converting elements of Language r to string)
Now the specifics of this problem are not important and simply serve to motivate my question: let us use nat instead of Exp and let us define a type List n which represents the lists of length n:
Parameter A:Set.
Inductive List : nat -> Set :=
| ListNil : List 0
| ListCons : forall (n:nat), A -> List n -> List (S n).
Here again I am using a single inductive definition to define a family of types List n.
I would like to prove:
Lemma L2: forall (x: List 0),
x = ListNil.
(in other words, the type List 0 has only one element).
I have run out of ideas on this one.
Normally when attempting to prove (negative) results with inductive types (or predicates), I would use the elim tactic (having made sure all the relevant hypothesis are inside my goal (generalize) and only variables occur in the type constructors). But elim is no good in this case.
If you are willing to accept more than just the basic logic of Coq, you can just use the dependent destruction tactic, available in the Program library (I've taken the liberty of rephrasing your last example in terms of standard-library vectors):
Require Coq.Vectors.Vector.
Require Import Program.
Lemma l0 A (v : Vector.t A 0) : v = #Vector.nil A.
Proof.
now dependent destruction v.
Qed.
If you inspect the term, you'll see that this tactic relied on the JMeq_eq axiom to get the proof to go through:
Print Assumptions l0.
Axioms:
JMeq_eq : forall (A : Type) (x y : A), x ~= y -> x = y
Fortunately, it is possible to prove l0 without having to resort to features outside of Coq's basic logic, by making a small change to the statement of the previous lemma.
Lemma l0_gen A n (v : Vector.t A n) :
match n return Vector.t A n -> Prop with
| 0 => fun v => v = #Vector.nil A
| _ => fun _ => True
end v.
Proof.
now destruct v.
Qed.
Lemma l0' A (v : Vector.t A 0) : v = #Vector.nil A.
Proof.
exact (l0_gen A 0 v).
Qed.
We can see that this new proof does not require any additional axioms:
Print Assumptions l0'.
Closed under the global context
What happened here? The problem, roughly speaking, is that in Coq we cannot perform case analysis on terms of dependent types whose indices have a specific shape (such as 0, in your case) directly. Instead, we must prove a more general statement where the problematic indices are replaced by variables. This is exactly what the l0_gen lemma is doing. Notice how we had to make the match on n return a function that abstracts on v. This is another instance of what is known as "convoy pattern". Had we written
match n with
| 0 => v = #Vector.nil A
| _ => True
end.
Coq would see the v in the 0 branch as having type Vector.t A n, making that branch ill-typed.
Coming up with such generalizations is one of the big pains of doing dependently typed programming in Coq. Other systems, such as Agda, make it possible to write this kind of code with much less effort, but it was only recently shown that this can be done without relying on the extra axioms that Coq wanted to avoid including in its basic theory. We can only hope that this will be simplified in future versions.

Can I extract a Coq proof as a Haskell function?

Ever since I learned a little bit of Coq I wanted to learn to write a Coq proof of the so-called division algorithm that is actually a logical proposition: forall n m : nat, exists q : nat, exists r : nat, n = q * m + r
I recently accomplished that task using what I learned from Software Foundations.
Coq being a system for developing constructive proofs, my proof is in effect a method to construct suitable values q and r from values m and n.
Coq has an intriguing facility for "extracting" an algorithm in Coq's algorithm language (Gallina) to general-purpose functional programming languages including Haskell.
Separately I have managed to write the divmod operation as a Gallina Fixpoint and extract that. I want to note carefully that that task is not what I'm considering here.
Adam Chlipala has written in Certified Programming with Dependent Types that "Many fans of the Curry-Howard correspondence support the idea of extracting programs from proofs. In reality, few users of Coq and related tools do any such thing."
Is it even possible to extract the algorithm implicit in my proof to Haskell? If it is possible, how would it be done?
Thanks to Prof. Pierce's summer 2012 video 4.1 as Dan Feltey suggested, we see that the key is that the theorem to be extracted must provide a member of Type rather than the usual kind of propositions, which is Prop.
For the particular theorem the affected construct is the inductive Prop ex and its notation exists. Similarly to what Prof. Pierce has done, we can state our own alternate definitions ex_t and exists_t that replace occurrences of Prop with occurrences of Type.
Here is the usual redefinition of ex and exists similarly as they are defined in Coq's standard library.
Inductive ex (X:Type) (P : X->Prop) : Prop :=
ex_intro : forall (witness:X), P witness -> ex X P.
Notation "'exists' x : X , p" := (ex _ (fun x:X => p))
(at level 200, x ident, right associativity) : type_scope.
Here are the alternate definitions.
Inductive ex_t (X:Type) (P : X->Type) : Type :=
ex_t_intro : forall (witness:X), P witness -> ex_t X P.
Notation "'exists_t' x : X , p" := (ex_t _ (fun x:X => p))
(at level 200, x ident, right associativity) : type_scope.
Now, somewhat unfortunately, it is necessary to repeat both the statement and the proof of the theorem using these new definitions.
What in the world??
Why is it necessary to make a reiterated statement of the theorem and a reiterated proof of the theorem, that differ only by using an alternative definition of the quantifier??
I had hoped to use the existing theorem in Prop to prove the theorem over again in Type. That strategy fails when Coq rejects the proof tactic inversion for a Prop in the environment when that Prop uses exists and the goal is a Type that uses exists_t. Coq reports "Error: Inversion would require case analysis on sort Set which is not allowed
for inductive definition ex." This behavior occurred in Coq 8.3. I am not certain that it
still occurs in Coq 8.4.
I think the need to repeat the proof is actually profound although I doubt that I personally am quite managing to perceive its profundity. It involves the facts that Prop is "impredicative" and Type is not impredicative, but rather, tacitly "stratified". Predicativity is (if I understand correctly) vulnerability to Russell's paradox that the set S of sets that are not members of themselves can neither be a member of S, nor a non-member of S. Type avoids Russell's paradox by tacitly creating a sequence of higher types that contain lower types. Because Coq is drenched in the formulae-as-types interpretation of the Curry-Howard correspondence, and if I am getting this right, we can even understand stratification of types in Coq as a way to avoid Gödel incompleteness, the phenomenon that certain formulae express constraints on formulae such as themselves and thereby become unknowable as to their truth or falsehood.
Back on planet Earth, here is the repeated statement of the theorem using "exists_t".
Theorem divalg_t : forall n m : nat, exists_t q : nat,
exists_t r : nat, n = plus (mult q m) r.
As I have omitted the proof of divalg, I will also omit the proof of divalg_t. I will only mention that we do have the good fortune that proof tactics including "exists" and "inversion" work just the same with our new definitions "ex_t" and "exists_t".
Finally, the extraction itself is accomplished easily.
Extraction Language Haskell.
Extraction "divalg.hs" divalg_t.
The resulting Haskell file contains a number of definitions, the heart of which is the reasonably nice code, below. And I was only slightly hampered by my near-total ignorance of the Haskell programming language. Note that Ex_t_intro creates a result whose type is Ex_t; O and S are the zero and the successor function from Peano arithmetic; beq_nat tests Peano numbers for equality; nat_rec is a higher-order function that recurs over the function among its arguments. The definition of nat_rec is not shown here. At any rate it is generated by Coq according to the inductive type "nat" that was defined in Coq.
divalg :: Nat -> Nat -> Ex_t Nat (Ex_t Nat ())
divalg n m =
case m of {
O -> Ex_t_intro O (Ex_t_intro n __);
S m' ->
nat_rec (Ex_t_intro O (Ex_t_intro O __)) (\n' iHn' ->
case iHn' of {
Ex_t_intro q' hq' ->
case hq' of {
Ex_t_intro r' _ ->
let {k = beq_nat r' m'} in
case k of {
True -> Ex_t_intro (S q') (Ex_t_intro O __);
False -> Ex_t_intro q' (Ex_t_intro (S r') __)}}}) n}
Update 2013-04-24: I know a bit more Haskell now. To assist others in reading the extracted code above, I'm presenting the following hand-rewritten code that I claim is equivalent and more readable. I'm also presenting the extracted definitions Nat, O, S, and nat_rec that I did not eliminate.
-- Extracted: Natural numbers (non-negative integers)
-- in the manner in which Peano defined them.
data Nat =
O
| S Nat
deriving (Eq, Show)
-- Extracted: General recursion over natural numbers,
-- an interpretation of Nat in the manner of higher-order abstract syntax.
nat_rec :: a1 -> (Nat -> a1 -> a1) -> Nat -> a1
nat_rec f f0 n =
case n of {
O -> f;
S n0 -> f0 n0 (nat_rec f f0 n0)}
-- Given non-negative integers n and m, produce (q, r) with n = q * m + r.
divalg_t :: Nat -> Nat -> (Nat, Nat)
divalg_t n O = (O, n) -- n/0: Define quotient 0, remainder n.
divalg_t n (S m') = divpos n m' -- n/(S m')
where
-- Given non-negative integers n and m',
-- and defining m = m' + 1,
-- produce (q, r) with n = q * m + r
-- so that q = floor (n / m) and r = n % m.
divpos :: Nat -> Nat -> (Nat, Nat)
divpos n m' = nat_rec (O, O) (incrDivMod m') n
-- Given a non-negative integer m' and
-- a pair of non-negative integers (q', r') with r <= m',
-- and defining m = m' + 1,
-- produce (q, r) with q*m + r = q'*m + r' + 1 and r <= m'.
incrDivMod :: Nat -> Nat -> (Nat, Nat) -> (Nat, Nat)
incrDivMod m' _ (q', r')
| r' == m' = (S q', O)
| otherwise = (q', S r')
The current copy of Software Foundations dated July 25, 2012, answers this quite concisely in the late chapter "Extraction2". The answer is that it can certainly be done, much like this:
Extraction Language Haskell
Extraction "divalg.hs" divalg
One more trick is necessary. Instead of a Prop, divalg must be a Type. Otherwise it will be erased in the process of extraction.
Uh oh, #Anthill is correct, I haven't answered the question because I don't know how to explain how Prof. Pierce accomplished that in his NormInType.v variant of his Norm.v and MoreStlc.v.
OK, here's the rest of my partial answer anyway.
Where "divalg" appears above, it will be necessary to provide a space-separated list of all of the propositions (which must each be redefined as a Type rather than a Prop) on which divalg relies. For a thorough, interesting, and working example of a proof extraction, one may consult the chapter Extraction2 mentioned above. That example extracts to OCaml, but adapting it for Haskell is simply a matter of using Extraction Language Haskell as above.
In part, the reason that I spent some time not knowing the above answer is that I have been using the copy of Software Foundations dated October 14, 2010, that I downloaded in 2011.