Refine and # (at) symbol in Coq 8.5pl1 - coq

In the previous version of Coq using symbol # in refine command allows me to create a prove step-by-step. (Each argument was a separate goal.)
I want to avoid implicit arguments like "?Goal0 ?Goal1". And now I can not.
What should I do obtain such possibility?
(It is very uncomfortable to me especially when I trying to deal with recursive functions.)

You are looking for simple refine.
In 8.5, goals that can be solved by unification (what you call implicit) are put in the "shelve" a hidden area, as they are considered trivial. You can unshelve them with Unshelve but it is a bit incovenient as it is a vernacular command.
simple refine behaves as 8.4 and doesn't put anything in the shelve.

Related

Ease life in dependently typed programming using `Function` and `Program` in Coq

I am trying to implement a dependently typed evaluator of STLC in Coq using Program Fixpoint. Since the language does not have fixed point operator, I think the evaluator should terminate, though the termination condition is not structural.
During my development, I find one source of headache is I simply can't keep track of too many variables at the same time, and pattern matching is too nested.
If it were about a mere Fixpoint, I can just implement the body using tactics, but when using Program Fixpoint or Function, I just cannot. Is there any trick to build body using tactics in this case?
I am stuck at very end: https://gist.github.com/HuStmpHrrr/0d92e646916ae9ec7ced3ff21724ba2d
When using Program, you can simply leave underscores for parts of your term you want to fill in using proof mode. Any underscores that can be inferred will automatically be filled in and the remaining will produce obligations. For example, you can write all of run in proof mode by writing Program Fixpoint run ... {measure ...} := _. The measure will show up as an argument to run in the context.

How to do higher-order term rewriting in Coq?

This question is based on my question https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/96533/how-to-transform-lambda-function-to-multi-argument-lambda-function-and-how-to-re There are two functions and two terms in that question:
Functions:
is: (e->t)->(e->t)
IS: e->(e->t)->t
Terms:
(is(boss))(John): t
IS(John, boss): t
My question is this: how to rewrite terms involving is with terms that have only IS? Does Coq (or third party tools) has such rewriting facilities? Does Coq have facilities to check the equality of rewrittern terms?
Maybe such rewriting can be done outside the Coq world, maybe there are other purely lambda calculus tools with syntactic manipulation only?
There is no tool that performs the kind of textual transformation of Coq code you are describing directly. Without knowing much about GrammaticalFramework, I imagine that your best bet would be to write a Sed script that looks for occurrences of is applied to arguments and replaced those occurrences by equivalent expressions with IS.
The second “IS“ form can be more easily converted to is-boss predicate, that is why I am striving to arrive at it.
I think that if you used a Sed script you could just as easily go to the IS_BOSS form directly, without using IS.

interactive theorem proving with no specified goal

What's the best approach to do interactive theorem proving in Coq without specifying a Theorem definition first? I'd like to state some initial assumptions and definitions, and then interactively explore transformations to see if I can prove any interesting theorems without knowing them ahead of time. I'd like Coq to help me keep track of the transformed assumptions and check that my rewrites are valid, like when proving explicit theorems in interactive mode. Does Coq have support for this use case?
One convenient method is to use the Variable/Hypothesis commands (they do the same thing) to add assumptions and introduce example objects (eg, Variable n:nat. introduces a nat you can now work with). Then to get into theorem proving mode what I do occasionally is Goal False. to start proving False, just to make sure I don't accidentally prove the theorem. You can also assert and admit things to get additional assumptions without restarting the proof.

Definition vs Notation for constants

I'm extending an existing project (Featherweight Java formalization),
and there are a number of constants, such as:
Notation env := (list (var * typ)).
What would change if I used Definition instead:
Definition env := (list (var * typ)).
Why did the author use Notation here?
Whenever you try to apply or rewrite with a lemma, there's a component in Coq called the unifier that tries to find out how to instantiate your lemma so that it can work with the situation at hand (and checking that it indeed applies there). The behavior of this unifier is a bit different depending on whether you use notations or definitions.
Notations are invisible to Coq's theory: they only affect the parsing and printing behavior of the system. In particular, the unifier doesn't need to explicitly unfold a notation when analyzing a term. Definitions, on the other hand, must be explicitly unfolded by the unifier. The problem is that the unifier works heuristically, and cannot tell with 100% certainty when some definition must be unfolded or not. As a consequence, we often find ourselves with a goal that mentions a definition that the unifier doesn't unfold by itself, preventing us from applying a lemma or rewriting, and having to manually add a call to unfold ourselves to get it to work.
Thus, notations can be used as a hack to help the unifier understand what an abbreviation means without manual unfolding steps.

"Verbose" auto in Coq

I'm learning Coq and the book I'm learning from, (CPDT) makes heavy use of auto in proofs.
Since I'm learning I think it might be helpful for me to see exactly what auto is doing under the hood (the less magic early on the better). Is there any way to force it to display exactly what tactics or techniques it's using to compute the proof?
If not, is there a place which details exactly what auto does?
There are multiple ways to get a glance at what is going on under the hood.
TLDR: Put info before your tactic, or use Show Proof. before and after calling the tactic and spot the differences.
To see what a particular tactic invocation has been doing, you can prefix is with info, so as to show the particular proof steps it has taken.
(This might be broken with Coq 8.4, I see that they provide info_ versions of some tactics, read the error message if you need to.)
This is probably what you want at a beginner level, it can already be quite terse.
Another way to see what is currently going on within a proof is to use the command Show Proof.. It will show you the currently built term with holes, and show you which hole each of your current goals is supposed to fill.
This is probably more advanced, especially if you use tactic such as induction or inversion, as the term being built is going to be fairly involved, and will require you to understand the underlying nature of induction schemes or dependent pattern-matching (which CPDT should teach you soon enough).
Once you have finished a proof with Qed. (or Defined.), you can also ask to look at the term that was built by using Print term. where term is the name of the theorem/term.
This will often be a big and ugly term, and it needs some training to be able to read these for involved terms. In particular, if the term has been built via the use of powerful tactics (such as omega, crush, etc.), it is probably going to be unreadable. You'd basically only use that to scan at some particular place of the term you're interested in. If it's more than 10 lines long, don't even bother reading it in such a crude format! :)
With all of the previous, you can use Set Printing All. beforehand, so that Coq prints the unfolded, explicit versions of everything. It is additionally verbose but can help when you wonder what the values of implicit parameters are.
These are all the ones I can think of on the top of my head, there might be more though.
As for what a tactic does, the usual best answer is found in the documentation:
http://coq.inria.fr/distrib/V8.4/refman/Reference-Manual011.html##tactic155
Basically, auto tries to use all the hints provided (depending on the database you use), and to solve your goal combining them up to some depth (that you can specify). By default, the database is core and the depth is 5.
More info on that can be found here:
http://coq.inria.fr/distrib/V8.4/refman/Reference-Manual011.html#Hints-databases