How do I create a synonym for a type class name? - isabelle

I want to abbreviate create a synonym for a type class name. Here's how I'm doing it now:
class fooC = linordered_idom
instance int :: fooC
proof qed
definition foof :: "'a::fooC ⇒ 'a" where
"foof x = x"
term "foof (x::int)"
value "foof (x::int)"
This works fine if there's not a better way to do it. The disadvantage is that I have to instantiate int, and the class command takes time to implement itself.
Update 140314
This update is to clarify for Makarius what it is I want, to explain my purpose in wanting it, and give a list of commands that I'm familiar with for creating notation, abbreviations, and synonyms, but commands which I couldn't get to work for what I want.
My initial choice of "abbreviation" rather than "synonym"
I guess "synonym" would have been a better word, but I chose "abbreviation" because it describes what I want, which is to be able to create a shorter name for for a type class, like renaming linordered_semidom to losdC. Though Isar abbreviation has some of the attributes of definition, it also just defines syntax. So, because "abbreviate" describes what I want, and abbreviation just defines syntax, I chose "abbreviation" instead of "synonym" or "alias".
Synonym/alias, Isar commands I couldn't get to work for that
"Alias" would describe what I want. As to the sentence "If you just want to save typing in the editor, you could use some abbreviations there," here are the commands I've experimented with to try and rename linordered_idom, but I couldn't get them to work for me:
type_notation
type_synonym
notation
abbreviation
syntax
Rather than explain what I've tried, and try to remember what I tried, I just list them. I did searches on "class" and only found the Isar commands class and classes. I thought maybe locale commands might be applicable, but I didn't find anything.
What I want is simple, like how type_synonym is used to define synonyms for types.
The purpose
There is my general desire to shorten type class names such as linordered_idom, because eventually, I plan on using the algebra type classes extensively.
However, there is a second reason, and that is to rename something like linordered_semidom to be part of a naming scheme of three types.
For any algebraic type class, such as linordered_semidom, I can use that type class, along with quotient_type, to create what I'll call a number system, such as how nat is used to define int.
Using Int.thy as a template, I did that with linordered_semidom, and then instantiated it as comm_ring_1, which is as far as I have time to go these days.
Additionally, with typedef, for any algebraic type class which has the dependencies of zero and one (and others such as ord), I can define a type of all elements greater than or equal to zero, and another one for all elements greater than zero. I did that for linordered_idom, but then I figured out that I actually needed to go the quotient_type route, to get things that model rat.
That's the long explanation. Eventually, I'll start working with numerous algebraic type classes, and from one type class, I'll get two more. If I do that for 20 type classes, and also use them, then long, descriptive names don't work, and renaming type classes will help me in knowing what type classes go together.
Here would be the scheme for linordered_semidom, where I don't know how this will actually work out, until I'm able to try it all:
linordered_semidom is the base class. I rename it to losdC. It's the numbers greater than or equal to zero for these three types.
losdQ is defined from losdC using quotient_type. It gives me the negative numbers, and the ability to coerce losdC to losdQ.
losd1 is defined using typedef, and is the numbers greater than zero.
I need a consistent naming scheme, to keep it all straight: losdC, losdQ, and losd1.
Finally, eventually even 4 types instead of 3 types
I haven't completely worked and thought things out (I'm not even close), but analogously, it's all related to implementing, for algebra type classes, the basic relationship between nat, int, and rat, where real might eventually come into play. Additionally, it's about getting a type, from these types, of the non-negative or positive members, if those don't come by default.
There is nat used for int, and int used for rat.
With nat used for int, we get the non-negative integers by default, which is nat.
With int used for rat, we don't get the non-negative members of rat, we get fractions. (Again, I'm talking about a type of non-negatives and positives, not a set of non-negatives and positives.)
So, if I use linordered_idom and quotient_type to define fractions, then I have to use typedef twice to get the non-negative and positive members of those fractions, which means I would have 4 types to keep track of, liodC, liodQ, liod0, and liod1.
If there's a simple solution to renaming type classes, then I've unnecessarily said about 600 words.

A definition is not an abbreviation, it introduces a separate term that is logical equal. That works for term constants.
A type class is semantically a predicate over types, and thus connected to some predicate (term constant), but in practice you rarely access that.
So what exactly means to "abbreviate a type class"?
For example, you might want to manipulate the class name space to get an alias for it, which is in principle possible. But what is the purpose?
If you just want to save typing in the editor, you could use some abbreviations there.
Another possibility, within the formal system, is to introduce genuine aliases in the name space. Isabelle provides some facilities for that, which are not very much advertized, because there is a real danger of obscuring libraries and preventing anyone else from understanding them, if names are changed too much.
This is how it works, using some friendly Isabelle/ML within the theory source:
class foobar = ord + fixes foobar :: 'a
setup {* Sign.class_alias #{binding f} #{class foobar} *}
typ "'a::f"
instantiation nat :: f
begin
definition foobar_nat :: nat where "foobar_nat = 0"
instance ..
end
Note that Sign.class_alias only refers to the type class name space in the narrow sense. A class is many things at the same time: locale, const (the prodicate), type class. You can see this in the following examples where the class is used as "target" for local definitions and theorems:
definition (in foobar) "fuzz = foobar"
theorem (in foobar) "fuzz = foobar" by (simp add: fuzz_def)
Technically, the locale name space used above could support aliases as well, but this is not done. Only basic Sign.class_alias, Sign.type_alias, Sign.const_alias are exposed for unusual situations, to address problems with legacy libraries.

Related

Define a type variable as either one of two options

In Isabelle/HOL, we would like to define multi-variable polynomials over either the naturals or the integers. Is there a way to write
datatype ('a::???) polynomial = ...
and specify that 'a should be either nat or int? A syntax like 'a::nat|int would seem intuitive at first, but unfortunately doesn't work.
A possible alternative would be to specify 'a::comm_semiring (possibly also adding countable) but we don't really need the full generality of abstract commutative semirings.

What's a cterm?

The Isabelle implementation manual says:
Types ctyp and cterm represent certified types and terms, respectively. These are abstract datatypes that guarantee that its values have passed the full well-formedness (and well-typedness) checks, relative to the declarations of type constructors, constants etc. in the background theory.
My understanding is: when I write cterm t, Isabelle checks that the term is well-built according to the theory where it lives in.
The abstract types ctyp and cterm are part of the same inference kernel that is mainly responsible for thm. Thus syntactic operations on ctyp and cterm are located in the Thm module, even though theorems
are not yet involved at that stage.
My understanding is: if I want to modify a cterm at the ML level I will use operations of the Thm module (where can I find that module?)
Furthermore, it looks like cterm t is an entity that converts a term of the theory level to a term of the ML-level. So I inspect the code of cterm in the declaration:
ML_val ‹
some_simproc #{context} #{cterm "some_term"}
›
and get to ml_antiquotations.ML:
ML_Antiquotation.value \<^binding>‹cterm› (Args.term >> (fn t =>
"Thm.cterm_of ML_context " ^ ML_Syntax.atomic (ML_Syntax.print_term t))) #>
This line of code is unreadable to me with my current knowledge.
I wonder if someone could give a better low-level explanation of cterm. What is the meaning of the code below? Where are located the checks that cterm performs on theory terms? Where are located the manipulations that we can do on cterms (the module Thm above)?
The ‘c’ stands for ‘certified’ (Or ‘checked’? Not sure). A cterm is basically a term that has been undergone checking. The #{cterm …} antiquotation allows you to simply write down terms and directly get a cterm in various contexts (in this case probably the context of ML, i.e. you directly get a cterm value with the intended content). The same works for regular terms, i.e. #{term …}.
You can manipulate cterms directly using the functions from the Thm structure (which, incidentally, can be found in ~~/src/Pure/thm.ML; most of these basic ML files are in the Pure directory). However, in my experience, it is usually easier to just convert the cterm to a regular term (using Thm.term_of – unlike Thm.cterm_of, this is a very cheap operation) and then work with the term instead. Directly manipulating cterms only really makes sense if you need another cterm in the end, because re-certifying terms is fairly expensive (still, unless your code is called very often, it probably isn't really a performance problem).
In most cases, I would say the workflow is like this: If you get a cterm as an input, you turn it into a regular term. This you can easily inspect/take apart/whatever. At some point, you might have to turn it into a cterm again (e.g. because you want to instantiate some theorem with it or use it in some other way that involves the kernel) and then you just use Thm.cterm_of to do that.
I don't know exactly what the #{cterm …} antiquotation does internally, but I would imagine that at the end of the day, it just parses its parameter as an Isabelle term and then certifies it with the current context (i.e. #{context}) using something like Thm.cterm_of.
To gather my findings with cterms, I post an answer.
This is how a cterm looks like in Pure:
abstype cterm =
Cterm of {cert: Context.certificate,
t: term, T: typ,
maxidx: int,
sorts: sort Ord_List.T}
(To be continued)

Subtype with different parameter than supertype

Let's say I have defined a Type merely as a alias for a certain array in Julia but with additional information, let's say just a string
abstract A{T,N}
foo::AbstractArray{T,N}
bar::Real
end
I would like to define a Subtype having maybe another element but also restricting the second parameter of the type to be an integer and having a value of N+1 if B is of type N.
type B{N::Int} <: A{T,N+1}
baz::Float64
end
In this example neither ::Int nor N+1 seem to be right nor are they syntactically. I'm a little new to Julia but I read a lot the last days and couldn't find a solution for that.
How can I do such a “restricted” subtype?
Edit: Maybe there's even another glitch. For the supertype N should be able to be a vector specifying the size of foo while for the subtype it should be an integer specifying the length of the vector.
Edit 2: I meant to use an abstract A which I edited now as mentioned in the comments
Edit 3: So I think one problem seems to be, that abstract types can not have fields (which I don't understand why but anyhow), then still I can't declare Type parameters to be e.g. just an Integer.
So how can I do something like
abstract A{T,N}
type B{N::Integer} <: A{Float64,N+1}
v:FixedVector{N+1,Float64}
end
I always get the problem, that N always (no matter what I do) stays a Typevar while I would like to just have an Integer. So is there a way to make a type dependent on a variable?

Reflecting on a Type parameter

I am trying to create a function
import Language.Reflection
foo : Type -> TT
I tried it by using the reflect tactic:
foo = proof
{
intro t
reflect t
}
but this reflects on the variable t itself:
*SOQuestion> foo
\t => P Bound (UN "t") (TType (UVar 41)) : Type -> TT
Reflection in Idris is a purely syntactic, compile-time only feature. To predict how it will work, you need to know about how Idris converts your program to its core language. Importantly, you won't be able to get ahold of reflected terms at runtime and reconstruct them like you would with Lisp. Here's how your program is compiled:
Internally, Idris creates a hole that will expect something of type Type -> TT.
It runs the proof script for foo in this state. We start with no assumptions and a goal of type Type -> TT. That is, there's a term being constructed which looks like ?rhs : Type => TT . rhs. The ?foo : ty => body syntax shows that there's a hole called foo whose eventual value will be available inside of body.
The step intro t creates a function whose argument is t : Type - this means that we now have a term like ?foo_body : TT . \t : Type => foo_body.
The reflect t step then fills the current hole by taking the term on its right-hand side and converting it to a TT. That term is in fact just a reference to the argument of the function, so you get the variable t. reflect, like all other proof script steps, only has access to the information that is available directly at compile time. Thus, the result of filling in foo_body with the reflection of the term t is P Bound (UN "t") (TType (UVar (-1))).
If you could do what you are wanting here, it would have major consequences both for understanding Idris code and for running it efficiently.
The loss in understanding would come from the inability to use parametricity to reason about the behavior of functions based on their types. All functions would effectively become potentially ad-hoc polymorphic, because they could (say) run differently on lists of strings than on lists of ints.
The loss in performance would come from representing enough type information to do the reflection. After Idris code is compiled, there is no type information left in it (unlike in a system such as the JVM or .NET or a dynamically typed system such as Python, where types have a runtime representation that code can access). In Idris, types can be very large, because they can contain arbitrary programs - this means that far more information would have to be maintained, and computation occurring at the type level would also have to be preserved and repeated at runtime.
If you're wanting to reflect on the structure of a type for further proof automation at compile time, take a look at the applyTactic tactic. Its argument should be a function that takes a reflected context and goal and gives back a new reflected tactic script. An example can be seen in the Data.Vect source.
So I suppose the summary is that Idris can't do what you want, and it probably never will be able to, but you might be able to make progress another way.

How to use a vector as a type parameter in Julia

This is similar to my previous question, but a bit more complicated.
Before I was defining a type with an associated integer as a parameter, Intp{p}. Now I would like to define a type using a vector as a parameter.
The following is the closest I can write to what I want:
type Extp{g::Vector{T}}
c::Vector{T}
end
In other words, Extp should be defined with respect to a Vector, g, and I want the contents, c, to be another Vector, whose entries should be the of the same type as the entries of g.
Well, this does not work.
Problem 1: I don't think I can use :: in the type parameter.
Problem 2: I could work around that by making the types of g and c arbitary and just making sure the types in the vectors match up in the constructor. But, even if I completely take everything out and use
type Extp{g}
c
end
it still doesn't seem to like this. When I try to use it the way I want to,
julia> Extp{[1,1,1]}([0,0,1])
ERROR: type: apply_type: in Extp, expected Type{T<:Top}, got Array{Int64,1}
So, does Julia just not like particular Vectors being associated with types? Does what I'm trying to do only work with integers, like in my Intp question?
EDIT: In the documentation I see that type parameters "can be any type at all (or an integer, actually, although here it’s clearly used as a type)." Does that mean that what I'm asking is impossible, and that that only types and integers work for Type parameters? If so, why? (what makes integers special over other types in Julia in this way?)
In Julia 0.4, you can use any "bitstype" as a parameter of a type. However, a vector is not a bitstype, so this is not going to work. The closest analog is to use a tuple: for example, (3.2, 1.5) is a perfectly valid type parameter.
In a sense vectors (or any mutable object) are antithetical to types, which cannot change at runtime.
Here is the relevant quote:
Both abstract and concrete types can be parameterized by other types
and by certain other values (currently integers, symbols, bools, and
tuples thereof).
So, your EDIT is correct. Widening this has come up on the Julia issues page (e.g., #5102 and #6081 were two related issues I found with some discussion), so this may change in the future - I'm guessing not in v0.4 though. It'd have to be an immutable type really to make any sense, so not Vector. I'm not sure I understand your application, but would a Tuple work?

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