> Referee no 1:

>

>  * The paper can be accepted for Logical Methods in Computer Science 

> after minor

> revisions

>

> NUMBER    : LMCS-2011-675

> TITLE     : General Bindings and Alpha-Equivalence in Nominal Isabelle

> AUTHOR(S) : Christian Urban, Cezary Kaliszyk

>

> Recommendation: The paper can be accepted for Logical Methods in

> Computer Science after minor revisions.

>

> The work reported is very good, but the presentation of the paper can

> be improved.

>

> [...]

>

> However, I recommend improvement of the presentation of the paper

> before it is accepted by LMCS.  While the motivation for the work of

> this paper is clear to anyone who has tried to formalize such

> reasoning, it is not explained in the paper.  E.g. on p.1 "However,

> Nominal Isabelle has fared less well in a formalisation of the

> algorithm W [...]."  But there is no analysis in the paper of what was

> hard in algorithm W coded with single binders, or explanation of how

> it would be done in the new system reported in this paper showing why

> the new approach works better in practice.  

We have expanded on the point and given details why single 

binders lead to clumsy formalisations of W.

> Although this example is

> one of the main motivations given for the work, there is apparently no

> formalization of algorithm W in the library of examples that comes

> with Nominal2 described in this paper.  I think that should be

> provided.  Similarly for the second motivating example (on p.2 "The

> need of iterating single binders is also one reason why Nominal

> Isabelle and similar theorem provers that only provide mechanisms for

> binding single variables have not fared extremely well with the more

> advanced tasks in the POPLmark challenge [2], because also there one

> would like to bind multiple variables at once.").

We proved the main properties about type-schemes in algorithm W: 

the ones that caused problems in our earlier formalisation. Though 

the complete formalisation of W is not yet in place.

> The new Isabelle package "Nominal2", described in this paper, is not

> ready for users without a lot of hand-holding from the Nominal2

> developers.  This paper would have more impact if interested users

> could try the tool without so much difficulty.

The plan is to have Nominal Isabelle be part of the next stable 

release of Isabelle, which should be out in Autumn 2012.

At the moment it can be downloaded as a bundle and is ready

to be used (there are two groups that use Nominal2 and 

only occasionally ask questions on the mailing list). 

> A few more specific points:

>

> Bottom of p.7: I don't understand the paragraph containing equations

> (2.4) and (2.5).

We reworded this paragraph.

> Bottom of p.9: The parameters R and fa of the alpha equivalence

> relation are dropped in the examples, so the examples are not clear.

We have two minds with this: Keeping R and fa is more faithful to

the definition, but it would not provide much intuition into

the definition. We feel explaining the definition in special

cases is more beneficial to the reader.

> I think there is a typo in the first example: "It can be easily

> checked that ({x,y},x->y) and ({y,x},y->x) are alpha-equivalent [...]"

> Did you mean "({x,y},x->y) and ({y,x},x->y) are alpha-equivalent"?

Both are equivalent since sets {x, y} and {y, x} are equal. But we made

it clearer as you suggest.

> Referee no 2:

>

> [...]

>

> My main criticisms of the paper are:

>

> * The definition of the "nominal signature" language is not completely clear.

>   The general format at the beginning of section 4 is very clear, but is in

>   fact too general: not everything that can be written in this format makes

>   sense. The authors then walk the reader through a series of 

>   examples of what

>   is *forbidden* (with informal explanations why these examples are

>   forbidden), but in the end, a positive definition of what is *permitted*

>   seems to be missing.

Yes, we agree very much: a positive definition would be very desirable.

Unfortunately, this is not as easy as one would hope. Already a positive

definition for a *datatype* in HOL is rather tricky. We would rely on this

for nominal datatypes. Then we would need to think about what to do with

nested datatype, before coming to nominal matters.

The only real defence for not giving a positive we have is that we give a 

sensible "upper bound". To appreciate this point, you need to consider that 

systems like Ott go beyond this upper bound and give definitions which are 

not sensible in the context of (named) alpha-equated structures.

> * The authors have isolated an important building block, the notion of

>   (multiple-name) abstraction (in Section 3). (Actually, there are three

>   variants of it.) This is good: it makes the whole construction modular

>   and helps simplify what follows. I don't know if this will make sense

>   for the authors, but I would like them to go further in this direction:

>   identify more elementary building blocks ("combinators", if you will),

>   study their properties in isolation, and in the end combine them to

>   obtain a very simple explanation of the "nominal signature" format

>   that is exposed to the user. In the present state of the paper, the

>   design of the "nominal signature" format seems somewhat ad hoc: the

>   format of the "binds" clauses is subject to several restrictions;

>   there seems to be a distinction between "binders" and ordinary

>   "terms"; there is a distinction between "recursive" and "non-recursive"

>   binders, and a distinction between "shallow" and "deep" binders. If

>   one could identify a small number of elementary building blocks and

>   explain/motivate the design of the surface specification language in

>   terms of these elementary notions, the paper might become all the more

>   compelling.

We are not sure whether we can make progress with this. There is such a

"combinator approach" described by Francois Pottier for C-alpha-ML. His approach

only needs an inner and outer combinator. However, this has led to quite

non-intuitive representations of "nominal datatypes". We attempted

to be as close as possible to what is used in the "wild" (and in Ott). 

This led us to isolate the notions of shallow, deep and recursive binders.

>   In the present state of the paper, I think the *implementation* of the

>   nominal package is very useful for the end user, but the *theory* that is

>   presented in this paper is still a bit cumbersome: the definitions of free

>   atoms, alpha-equivalence, etc. presented on pages 16-20 are understandable

>   but not compelling by their simplicity.

We agree - simpler would be much better. However, we refer the referee to "competing" 

definitions that are substantially more complicated. Please try to understand 

the notion of alpha-equivalence for Ott (which has been published). Taking 

tgis into account, we really think our definitions are a substantial improvement,

as witnessed by the fact that we were actually able to code them up.

> * I do not quite understand the treatment of the finiteness restriction.

>   I understand that things must have finite support so as to allow picking

>   atoms outside of their support. But finiteness side conditions seem to

>   appear pretty early and in unexpected places; e.g. I would expect the

>   support of a set of atoms "as" to be equal to "as", regardless of whether

>   "as" is finite or infinite. This could be clarified.

This is a peculiarity of support which has been explained elsewhere in the nominal

literature (pointers in the paper). Assume all_atoms is the set of all atoms then

     supp all_atoms = {}

For sets of atoms the support behaves as follows:

     supp as = as             if as is finite

     supp as = all_atoms      if as and all_atoms - as are infinite

     supp as = all_atoms - as if as is co-finite 

As said, such properties have been described in the literature and it would be

overkill to include them again in this paper. Since in programming language research 

nearly always considers only finitely supported structures, we often restrict

our work to these cases. Knowing that an object of interest has only finite support

is needed when fresh atoms need to be chosen. 

> * The choice of abstraction "style" is limited to three built-in forms (list,

>   set, and set+). Perhaps one could make this user-extensible. After 

>   all, very few properties seem to be required of the basic abstraction forms, 

>   so why not let the user define new ones?

This would be nice, but we do make use of the equality properties

of abstractions (which are different for the set, set+ and list cases).

So we have yet to find a unifying framework.

> * One may argue that the set-abstractions are an attempt to kill two birds

>   with one stone. On the one hand, we take the quotient raw terms modulo a

>   standard notion of alpha-equivalence; on the other hand, at the same time,

>   we take the quotient modulo a notion of structural equivalence (permutation

>   of binders, removal or introduction of vacuous binders). One could argue

>   that dealing with structural equivalence should be left to the user, because

>   in general the structural equivalence axioms that the user needs can be

>   arbitrarily complex and application-specific. 

Yes, we can actually only deal with *one* non-trivial structural equivalence,

namely set+ (introduction of vacuous binders). For us, it seems this is an application

that occurs more often than not. Type-schemes are one example; the Psi-calculus

from the group around Joachim Parrow are another; in the paper we also point to

work by Altenkirch that uses set+. Therefore we like to give automated support 

for set+. Doing this without automatic support would be quite painful for the user.

>   There are object languages,

>   for instance, where abstractions commute with pairs: binding a name in a

>   pair is the same as binding a name within each of the pair components.

>   (This is the case in first-order logic where forall distributes over

>   conjunction.) Thus, one may fear that in many cases, the set and set+

>   abstractions will not be sufficiently powerful to encode the desired

>   structural equivalence, and the user will need to explicitly define 

> a notion

>   of structural equivalence anyway. I don't think that the paper provides

>   convincing evidence that set and set+ abstractions are useful. (That said,

>   they don't cost much, so why not include them? Sure.)

From our experience, once a feature is included, applications will

be found. Case in point, the set+ binder arises naturally in the

psi-calculus and is used in work by Altenkirch.

> * Here is little challenge related to set-abstractions. Could you explain how

>   to define the syntax of an object language with a construct like this:

>

>     let x1 = t1 and ... and xn = tn in t

>

>   where the xi's are bound in t (this is a non-recursive multiple-let form)

>   and the order of the definitions does not matter (that is, "let x1 = t1

>   and x2 = t2 in t" is alpha-equivalent to "let x2 = t2 and x1 = t1 in t")?

>   Can you use a set-abstraction to achieve this? I am guessing that this

>   might be possible, if one represents the definitions "x1 = t1 and ..."

>   using a set of pairs (or a map of names to terms) as opposed to a list

>   of pairs. I think that the system should at the very least allow encoding

>   this example, otherwise set-abstractions will not be very useful in

>   practice.

We can. We added this as an example in the conclusion section.

> p.2, "this leads to a rather clumsy formalisation of W". Could you explain

> why? Although I can understand why in some circumstances it is desirable to

> have a notion of alpha-equivalence that includes re-ordering binders, 

> I am not

> sure that the ML type system (or its inference algorithm) is a good

> illustration. If one examines the typing rules of Core ML, one finds that

> their premises involve a notion of equality between *types* (for 

> instance, the

> function application rule requires that the types of the formal and actual

> arguments match) but do not involve any notion of equality between *type

> schemes*. Type schemes are constructed and eliminated; they are never 

> compared

> with one another. For this reason, it is not clear that a notion of

> alpha-equivalence for type schemes is required at all, let alone that it must

> allow re-ordering binders and/or disregarding vacuous binders.

In the correctness *proof* of W, the notion of capture-avoiding 

substitution plays a crucial role. The notion of capture-avoiding

substitution without the notion of alpha-equivalence does not make

much sense. This is different from *implementations* of W. They

might get away with concrete representations of type-schemes. 

> p.3, "let the user chose" -> "choose"

Fixed.

> p.5, I am not sure what you mean by "automatic proofs". Do you mean

> automatically-generated proof scripts, or proofs performed automatically by a

> decision procedure, or ... ?

Fixed.

> p.5, "adaption"

Fixed.

> p.5, it seems strange to use the symbol "+" for composition, a 

> non-commutative

> operation.

Yes. This is a "flaw" in the type-class setup. If we want to reuse libraries

from Isabelle, we have to bite into this "sour" apple.

> Equation (2.2) is unfamiliar to me. I am used to seeing "supp x" defined as

> the least set L such that for every permutation pi, if pi fixes L, then pi

> fixes x. I assume that the two definitions are equivalent? Is there a reason

> why you prefer this one?

Our definition is equivalent to yours for finitely supported x. 

The advantage of our definition is that can be easily stated

in a theorem prover since it fits into the scheme

   constant args = term

Your definition as the least set...does not fit into this simple 

scheme. Our definition has been described extensively elsewhere,

to which we refer the reader.

> Proposition 2.3, item (i) is not very easy to read, because text and math

> are mixed and "as" happens to be an English word. 

Replaced by bs.

> More importantly, could

> you explain why the hypothesis "finite as" is needed? The proposition seems

> intuitively true if we remove this hypothesis: it states exactly that 

> "supp x"

> is the least set that supports x (this is actually the definition of "supp"

> that I expected, as mentioned above).

It does *not* work for non-finitely supported sets of atoms. Imagine

bs is the set of "even" atoms (a set that is not finite nor co-finite).

   bs supports bs

but 

   supp bs = all_atoms    !<=   bs 

> p.8, "equivariant functions have empty support". I suppose the converse is

> true, i.e. "functions that have empty support are equivariant". If this is

> correct, please say so.

We have reworded this paragraph.

> p.8, "we used extensively Property 2.1". You mean "Proposition 2.1". 

Fixed.

> p.8, "we identify four conditions: (i) [...] x and y need to have the same

> set of free atoms". You seem to be saying that fa(x) and fa(y) should be

> equal. But this is too strong; I suppose you mean fa(x) \ as = fa(y) \ bs.

> Please clarify. (Definition 3.1 indeed clarifies this, but I believe that

> the text that precedes it is a bit confusing.)

Fixed.

> p.9, it seems to me that alpha-equivalence for Set+ bindings (Definition 3.3)

> is in a sense the most general of the three notions presented here. Indeed,

> alpha-equivalence for Set bindings can be defined in terms of it, as follows:

>

>   (as, x) =_{Set} (bs, y)

>   if and only if

>   (as, (as, x)) =_{Set+} (bs, (bs, y))

>

> That is, I am comparing abstractions whose body has type "atom set * beta".

> The comparison of the set components forces condition (iv) of Definition 3.1.

> Similarly, alpha-equivalence for List bindings can be defined in terms of it,

> as follows:

>

>   (as, x) =_{List} (bs, y)

>   if and only if

>   (set as, (as, x)) =_{Set+} (set bs, (bs, y))

>

> That is, I am comparing abstractions whose body has type "atom list * beta".

> Am I correct to think that one can do this? If so, could this help eliminate

> some redundancy in the paper or in the implementation? And, for a 

> more radical

> suggestion, could one decide to expose only Set+ equality to the programmer,

> and let him/her explicitly encode Set/List equality where desired?

The second property holds outright. The first holds provided as and bs

are finite sets of atoms. However, we seem to not gain much code reduction

from these properties, except for defining the modes set and list in terms 

of set+. Also often proving properties for set+ is harder than for the

other modes.

Since these modes behave differently as alpha-equivalence, the encoding would, 

in our opinion, blurr this difference. We however noted these facts in the conclusion. 

> p.10, "in these relation"

Fixed.

> p.10, isn't equation (3.3) a *definition* of the action of permutations

> on the newly defined quotient type "beta abs_{set}"?

Yes, we have this now as the definition. Earlier we really had

derived this. Both methods need equal work (the definition

needs a proof to be proper). Having it as definition is clearer.

> p.11, why do you need to "assume that x has finite support" in order to

> obtain property 3.4? It seems to me that this fact should also hold for

> an x with infinite support. 

Fixed.

> Same remark in a couple of places further

> down on this page. You note that "supp bs = bs" holds "for every finite

> set of atoms bs". Is it *not* the case that this also holds for infinite

> sets? If so, what *is* the support of an infinite set of atoms? 

This property only holds for finite sets bs. See above.

> Why not

> adopt a definition of support that validates "supp bs = bs" for *every*

> set of atoms bs? Is there a difficulty due to the fact that what you

> call a "permutation" is in a fact "a permutation with finite support"?

> I think it would be good to motivate your technical choices and clarify

> exactly where/why a finite support assumption is required.

This cannot be made as it is very natural to have the property

that the set of all atoms has empty support. There is no permutation

that does not fix that set. We cannot see how this can be made

to work so that

   supp bs = bs 

for all sets.

> p.11, "The other half is a bit more involved." I would suggest removing

> this rather scary sentence. The proof actually appears very simple and

> elegant to me.

Fixed.

> p.12, "mutual recursive" -> "mutually recursive"

Fixed.

> p.12, does the tool support parameterized data type definitions? If so,

> please mention it, otherwise explain whether there is a difficulty (e.g.

> the parameters would need to come with a notion of permutation).

Yes. Note added.

> p.12, "Interestingly, [...] will make a difference [...]". At this 

> point, upon

> first reading, this is not "interesting" but rather frustrating, because it

> does not sound natural: my understanding would be very much simplified if

> "binds ... in t u" was equivalent to "binds ... in t, binds ... in 

> u". Because

> a forward pointer is missing, I cannot find immediately where this is

> explained, and this problem hinders my reading of the beginning of section 5.

We have given a forward pointer.

> p.13, the type of atoms now seems to be "name", whereas it was previously

> "atom". The remark on the last line of page 13 leads me to understand that

> "name" refers to one specific sort of atoms, whereas "atom" refers to an

> atom of any sort (right?). The function "atom" converts one to the other;

> but what is its type (is it overloaded?).

Yes, atom is overloaded. 

> p.13, you distinguish shallow binders (binds x in ...) and deep binders

> (binds bn(x) in ...). I would hope that a shallow binder is just syntactic

> sugar for a deep binder where "bn" is the "singleton list" or "singleton

> set" function. Is this the case? If not, why not? If yes, perhaps you could

> remove all mentions to shallow binders in section 5.

Not quite. A deep binder can be recursive, which is a notion

that does not make sense for shallow binders.

> p.14, "we cannot have more than one binding function for a deep binder".  You

> exclude "binds bn_1(p) bn_2(p) in t". Couldn't this be accepted and

> interpreted as "binds bn_1(p) \cup bn_2(p) in t"? (I guess it does not matter

> much either way.)

That would make the definition of fa-function more complicated.

> p.14, you also exclude "binds bn1(p) in t1, binds bn2(p) in t2". Two

> questions. First, a clarification: if bn1 and bn2 are the same function, is

> this allowed or excluded? 

For practical purposes, this is excluded. But the theory would

support this case. I added a comment in the paper.

> Second, I don't understand why you need this

> restriction, that is, why you are trying to prevent an atom to be "bound and

> free at the same time" (bound in one sub-term and free in another). I 

> mean, in

> the case of single binders, you seem to allow "binds x y in t1, binds 

> y in t2"

> (at least, you have not stated that you disallow this). There, occurrences of

> x in t1 are considered bound, whereas occurrences of x in t2 are considered

> free; is this correct? If so, why not allow "binds bn1(p) in t1, binds bn2(p)

> in t2", which seems to be of a similar nature? 

The problem is that bn1 and bn2 can pick out different atoms to

be free and bound in p. Therefore we have to exclude this case.

> p.14, example 4.4, the restriction that you impose here seems to rule out

> an interesting and potentially useful pattern, namely telescopes. A telescope

> is a list of binders, where each binder scopes over the rest of the 

> telescope,

> and in addition all of the names introduced by the telescope are considered

> bound by the telescope in some separate term. I am thinking of 

> something along

> the following lines:

>

>   nominal_datatype trm =

>   | Var name

>   | Let tele::telescope body::trm  binds bn(tele) in body

>   | ...

>

>   and telescope =

>   | TNil

>   | TCons x::name rhs::trm rest::telescope  binds x in rest

>

>   binder bn::telescope => atom list

>   where bn (TNil) = []

>       | bn (TCons x rhs rest) = [ atom x ] @ bn(rest)

>

> You write that "if we would permit bn to return y, then it would not be

> respectful and therefore cannot be lifted to alpha-equated lambda-terms". I

> can see why there is a problem: if "x" is considered bound (therefore

> anonymous) in the telescope "TCons x rhs rest", then it cannot possibly be

> returned by a (well-behaved) function "bn". I think that the answer to this

> problem should be: we must pick an appropriate notion of alpha-equivalence

> for telescopes, and this notion of alpha-equivalence must *not* consider x

> as anonymous in "TCons x rhs rest". Instead, x must be considered free in

> this telescope. The telescopes "TCons x rhs TNil" and "TCons y rhs TNil"

> must be considered distinct. Of course we could achieve this effect just by

> removing the clause "binds x in rest", but this would lead to a notion of

> alpha-equivalence for "Let" terms which is not the desired one: when writing

> "let (x1 = t1; x2 = t2) in t", we would like x1 to be bound in t2, and this