Deep Induction: Induction Rules For (Truly) Nested Types

ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Patricia Johann Ph.D, Professor (Creator)
Institution
Appalachian State University (ASU )
Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/

Abstract: This paper introduces deep induction, and shows that it is the notion of induction most appropriate to nested types and other data types defined over, or mutually recursively with, (other) such types. Standard induction rules induct over only the top-level structure of data, leaving any data internal to the top-level structure untouched. By contrast, deep induction rules induct over all of the structured data present. We give a grammar generating a robust class of nested types (and thus ADTs), and develop a fundamental theory of deep induction for them using their recently defined semantics as fixed points of accessible functors on locally presentable categories. We then use our theory to derive deep induction rules for some common ADTs and nested types, and show how these rules specialize to give the standard structural induction rules for these types. We also show how deep induction specializes to solve the long-standing problem of deriving principled and practically useful structural induction rules for bushes and other truly nested types. Overall, deep induction opens the way to making induction principles appropriate to richly structured data types available in programming languages and proof assistants. Agda implementations of our development and examples, including two extended case studies, are available.

Additional Information

Publication
Johann, P. & Polonsky, A. (2020). Deep Induction: Induction Rules for (Truly) Nested Types. Proceedings, Foundations of Software Science and Computation Structures 2020, pp. 339-358. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. NC Docks permission to re- print granted by author(s).
Language: English
Date: 2020
Keywords
deep induction, nested types, data types, ADTs, programming languages

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