Isabelle list lifter and compression - isabelle

Question

From two sets in Isabelle a third list needs to be created with element of the form (a, b) where a is from the first set and b is in the second set. in addition the elements in the last set must be filtered by some condition.
The code:
theory Scratch
imports Main Nat
begin
value "let a = {(1::int), 2, 3, 4} in (let b = {(6::int),7,8,9} in
((1::int), 6) ∈ set (filter (λ el . (snd el) < 8) [(n,m). n ∈ a ∧ m ∈ b]))"
end
The result I expected was True or False. the results was:
"(1, 6)
∈ set [u←if (1 = n ∨ 2 = n ∨ 3 = n ∨ 4 = n) ∧
(6 = m ∨ 7 = m ∨ 8 = m ∨ 9 = m)
then [(n, m)] else [] . snd u < 8]"
:: "bool"
Why does the result not evaluate to a True/False value?
Is it possible to write code where the filter functions is evaluated on a set and not list?

Answer 1

First of all, you cannot convert sets to lists. Lists have a specific order of elements; sets do not.
Question 1
This is because you have free variables in there: n and m. The expression [(n,m). n ∈ a ∧ m ∈ b] basically means if n ∈ a ∧ m ∈ b then [(n,m)] else []. This is not what you want.
If a and b were lists, you could use the list comprehension syntax [(n,m). n ← a, m ← b]. However, since a and b are sets, this cannot possibly work, since the result would be a list with a specific order, and that order has to come from somewhere – but a and b, as sets, have no such order.
Question 2
In formalisation, the best approach is to first define things abstractly, without using data structures that are too concrete. If you don't need to maintain a specific ordering of your values, use a set, not a list. You can then later refine this from sets to lists in order to obtain executable (and efficient) code.
There is a section on refinement in the Isabelle code generation manual. I recommend you have a look at it.
That said, there is some limited support for code generation with sets. Sets are then internally represented as lists and most basic operations work, but code generation may sometimes fail – not all operations on sets are computable in general. There is the function Set.filter, which is executable and basically does the same on sets as the regular filter function does for lists.
However, the following will fail due to a wellsortedness error:
value "let a = {(1::int), 2, 3, 4} in (let b = {(6::int),7,8,9} in
((1::int), (6 :: int)) ∈ Set.filter (λ el . (snd el) < 8) {x. fst x ∈ a ∧ snd x ∈ b})"
This is because set comprehensions (i.e. {x. … }) are, in general, not computable. You have to replace this {x. fst x ∈ a ∧ snd x ∈ b} with something the code generator can generate code for. In this case, it's easy, because this operation is just the cartesian product. You can write:
value "let a = {(1::int), 2, 3, 4} in (let b = {(6::int),7,8,9} in
((1::int), (6 :: int)) ∈ Set.filter (λ el . (snd el) < 8) (a × b))"
And you get the result you'd expect.