Paper/Paper.thy
author Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de>
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:17:21 +0100
changeset 1493 52f68b524fd2
parent 1491 f970ca9b5bec
child 1506 7c607df46a0a
permissions -rw-r--r--
slightly more of the paper

(*<*)
theory Paper
imports "../Nominal/Test"
begin

notation (latex output)
  swap ("'(_ _')" [1000, 1000] 1000) and
  fresh ("_ # _" [51, 51] 50) and
  supp ("supp _" [78] 73) and
  uminus ("-_" [78] 73) and
  If  ("if _ then _ else _" 10)
(*>*)

section {* Introduction *}

text {*

  It has not yet fared so well in the POPLmark challenge
  as the second part contain a formalisation of records 
  where ...

  The difficulty can be appreciated by considering that the
  definition given by Leroy in [] is incorrect (it omits a
  side-condition).

  Examples: type-schemes, Spi-calculus

  Contributions:  We provide definitions for when terms
  involving general bindings are alpha-equivelent.
*}

section {* A Short Review of the Nominal Logic Work *}

text {*
  At its core, Nominal Isabelle is based on the nominal logic work by Pitts
  \cite{Pitts03}. The central notions in this work are sorted atoms and
  permutations of atoms. The sorted atoms represent different
  kinds of variables, such as term- and type-variables in Core-Haskell, and it
  is assumed that there is an infinite supply of atoms for each sort. 
  However, in order to simplify the description of our work, we shall
  assume in this paper that there is only a single sort of atoms.

  Permutations are bijective functions from atoms to atoms that are 
  the identity everywhere except on a finite number of atoms. There is a 
  two-place permutation operation written

  @{text [display,indent=5] "_ \<bullet> _  ::  (\<alpha> \<times> \<alpha>) list \<Rightarrow> \<beta> \<Rightarrow> \<beta>"}

  \noindent 
  with a generic type in which @{text "\<alpha>"} stands for the type of atoms 
  and @{text "\<beta>"} for the type of the objects on which the permutation 
  acts. In Nominal Isabelle the identity permutation is written as @{term "0::perm"},
  the composition of two permutations @{term p} and @{term q} as \mbox{@{term "p + q"}} 
  and the inverse permutation @{term p} as @{text "- p"}. The permutation
  operation is defined for products, lists, sets, functions, booleans etc 
  (see \cite{HuffmanUrban10}).

  The most original aspect of the nominal logic work of Pitts et al is a general
  definition for ``the set of free variables of an object @{text "x"}''.  This
  definition is general in the sense that it applies not only to lambda-terms,
  but also to lists, products, sets and even functions. The definition depends
  only on the permutation operation and on the notion of equality defined for
  the type of @{text x}, namely:

  @{thm [display,indent=5] supp_def[no_vars, THEN eq_reflection]}

  \noindent
  There is also the derived notion for when an atom @{text a} is \emph{fresh}
  for an @{text x}, defined as
  
  @{thm [display,indent=5] fresh_def[no_vars]}

  \noindent
  A striking consequence of these definitions is that we can prove
  without knowing anything about the structure of @{term x} that
  swapping two fresh atoms, say @{text a} and @{text b}, leave 
  @{text x} unchanged. For the proof we use the following lemma 
  about swappings applied to an @{text x}:

*}


section {* Abstractions *}

section {* Alpha-Equivalence and Free Variables *}

section {* Examples *}

section {* Conclusion *}

text {*

  \noindent
  {\bf Acknowledgements:} We thank Andrew Pitts for the many discussions
  about the topic. We thank Peter Sewell for making [] available 
  to us and explaining some of the finer points of the OTT tool.


*}



(*<*)
end
(*>*)