How to fix Ocaml Unbound constructor error? - ocaml

let rec natadd_nat c =
match c with
| 0 -> O
| _ -> (S (natadd_nat (c-1)))
let rec natadd_int c =
match c with
| O -> 0
| S n' -> 1+(natadd_int n')
let natadd a b =
natadd_nat((natadd_int a) + (natadd_int b))
This is the code I wrote in ocaml. natadd_nat is a function that converts an int to a symbol consisting of O and S. natadd_int is a function that converts the symbols of O and S into int. The natadd function changes the symbols a and b from natadd_int to int. And after adding the two values ​​changed to int, put it in the natadd_nat function and change it back to a symbol.
But in the natadd_nat function,
Unbound constructor O
error occurred in the
| 0 -> O
part.
How can I solve this?
example)
# let two = S (S O) ;;
# let three = S (S (S O)) ;;
# natadd two three ;;
- : nat = S (S (S (S (S O))))

A type constructor requires a type be declared with that constructors (or in this case constructors.
Judging from the code you've posted, you're likely missing something like:
type nat = O | S of nat

Related

Why Peano numbers in OCaml not working due to scope error?

I have the following peano number written with GADTs:
type z = Z of z
type 'a s = Z | S of 'a
type _ t = Z : z t | S : 'n t -> 'n s t
module T = struct
type nonrec 'a t = 'a t
end
type 'a nat = 'a t
type e = T : 'n nat -> e
The following function to decode a 'a nat (or 'a t) into the number it encoded, works:
let to_int : type n. n t -> int =
let rec go : type n. int -> n t -> int =
fun acc n -> match n with Z -> acc | S n -> go (acc + 1) n
in
fun x -> go 0 x
but if I try to rewrite it almost exactly the same this way:
let to_int2 (type a) (a: a nat) : int =
let rec go (type a) (acc : int) (x : a nat) : int =
match x with
| Z -> acc
| S v -> go (acc + 1) v
in
go 0 a
I get a scope error. What's the difference between the two functions?
138 | | S v -> go (acc + 1) v
^
Error: This expression has type $0 t but an expression was expected of type
'a
The type constructor $0 would escape its scope
The root issue is polymorphic recursion, GADTs are a red herring here.
Without an explicit annotation, recursive functions are not polymorphic in their own definition.
For instance, the following function has type int -> int
let rec id x =
let _discard = lazy (id 0) in
x;;
because id is not polymorphic in
let _discard = lazy (id 0) in
and thus id 0 implies that the type of id is int -> 'a which leads to id having type int -> int.
In order to define polymorphic recursive function, one need to add an explicit universally quantified annotation
let rec id : 'a. 'a -> 'a = fun x ->
let _discard = lazy (id 0) in
x
With this change, id recovers its expected 'a -> 'a type.
This requirement does not change with GADTs. Simplifying your code
let rec to_int (type a) (x : a nat) : int =
match x with
| Z -> 0
| S v -> 1 + to_int v
the annotation x: a nat implies that the function to_int only works with a nat, but you are applying to an incompatible type (and ones that lives in a too narrow scope but that is secondary).
Like in the non-GADT case, the solution is to add an explicit polymorphic annotation:
let rec to_int: 'a. 'a nat -> int = fun (type a) (x : a nat) ->
match x with
| Z -> 0
| S v -> 1 + to_int v
Since the form 'a. 'a nat -> int = fun (type a) (x : a nat) -> is both a mouthful and quite often needed with recursive function on GADTs, there is a shortcut notation available:
let rec to_int: type a. a nat -> int = fun x ->
match x with
| Z -> 0
| S v -> 1 + to_int v
For people not very familiar with GADTs, this form is the one to prefer whenever one write a GADT function. Indeed, not only this avoids the issue with polymorphic recursion, writing down the explicit type of a function before trying to implement it is generally a good idea with GADTs.
See also https://ocaml.org/manual/polymorphism.html#s:polymorphic-recursion , https://ocaml.org/manual/gadts-tutorial.html#s%3Agadts-recfun , and https://v2.ocaml.org/manual/locallyabstract.html#p:polymorpic-locally-abstract .

When is OCaml's warning 27 "Innocuous unused variable" useful?

This is the description of warning 27 from the OCaml manual:
27 Innocuous unused variable: unused variable that is not bound with let nor as, and doesn't start with an underscore (_) character.
This warning is turned on by jbuilder --dev, and I'm curious to know in which cases people find it useful. For me, it's an annoyance to get warnings when I write code like this:
$ utop -w +27
utop # fun (x, y) -> x;;
Characters 8-9:
Warning 27: unused variable y.
- : 'a * 'b -> 'a = <fun>
or like that:
utop # let error loc msg = failwith (loc ^ ": " ^ msg);;
val error : string -> string -> 'a = <fun>
utop # let rec eval = function
| `Plus (loc, a, b) -> eval a + eval b
| `Minus (loc, a, b) -> eval a - eval b
| `Star (loc, a, b) -> eval a * eval b
| `Slash (loc, a, b) ->
let denom = eval b in
if denom = 0 then
error loc "division by zero"
else
eval a / denom
| `Int (loc, x) -> x
;;
Characters 33-36:
Warning 27: unused variable loc.
Characters 73-76:
Warning 27: unused variable loc.
Characters 112-115:
Warning 27: unused variable loc.
Characters 287-290:
Warning 27: unused variable loc.
val eval :
([< `Int of 'b * int
| `Minus of 'c * 'a * 'a
| `Plus of 'd * 'a * 'a
| `Slash of 'e * 'a * 'a
| `Star of 'f * 'a * 'a ]
as 'a) ->
int = <fun>
I know that prepending an underscore to the identifiers as in _loc suppresses the warnings, but it's not compatible with my notions that:
variables starting with an underscore are ugly and are meant for use in generated code, hidden from the programmer;
a name given to something should not have to change based on how it's used (including unused).
Using underscores, the code becomes:
(* Here we have _loc or loc depending on whether it's used. *)
let rec eval = function
| `Plus (_loc, a, b) -> eval a + eval b
| `Minus (_loc, a, b) -> eval a - eval b
| `Star (_loc, a, b) -> eval a * eval b
| `Slash (loc, a, b) ->
let denom = eval b in
if denom = 0 then
error loc "division by zero"
else
eval a / denom
| `Int (_loc, x) -> x
or
(* Here it can be hard to know what _ stands for. *)
let rec eval = function
| `Plus (_, a, b) -> eval a + eval b
| `Minus (_, a, b) -> eval a - eval b
| `Star (_, a, b) -> eval a * eval b
| `Slash (loc, a, b) ->
let denom = eval b in
if denom = 0 then
error loc "division by zero"
else
eval a / denom
| `Int (_, x) -> x
It is very useful in the monadic code, where instead of the common syntactic let bindings you're forced to use monadic >>= bind operator. Basically, where
let x = something in
code
translates to
something >>= fun x ->
code
If x is not used in code then only with the 27 warning enabled the latter will be highlighted, while the former will produce a warning by default. Enabling this warning, revealed lots of bugs for us. For example, it showed us that this code is buggy :)
Another source of use cases are higher-order functions, i.e., map, fold, etc. It captures one of the most common bugs:
let bug init =
List.fold ~init ~f:(fun acc xs ->
List.fold ~init ~f:(fun acc x -> x :: acc))
Concerning the ugliness, I totally agree that underscores are ugly, but in most cases, this is the main purpose of them - to highlight the suspicious code. Concerning the example, that you're showing, in the modern OCaml it could be easily addressed with the inline records, e.g.,
type exp =
| Plus of {loc : loc; lhs : exp; rhs: exp}
| ...
so that instead of using the underscores, you can just omit the unused field,
let rec eval = function
| Plus {lhs; rhs} -> eval lhs + eval rhs
You can use the same approach without using inline records by sparing some extra space in your program and defining all those records separately. The real-world example.
For me this warning is useful in order to remind me to explicit more my intention. If we take your example :
fun (x, y) -> x;;
Your intention is to use only the first element. If we rewrite it this way :
fun (x, _ ) -> x;;
You use a pattern matching in the parameter to make your code more concise, but you explain your intention of using only the first element. The added value in this example is small, related to the very simple implementation. But in real life functions, this warning promote a good habit in coding.

OCaml: How to handle sum type properly?

suppose I have the following code:
type s = A of a | B of b
let foo (a:?) =
let bar (input:s) = match input with
| A a -> foo input
| B b -> ...
My question is what should I fill in the question mark in the signature of foo so I won't need a (redundant) match statement in it? Or is there a better pattern to do this?
If you want to avoid rematch, I see 3 solutions:
have the function foo simply take the "payload" of the value constructor A, and reconstruct a value of type s as its output (or any other type matching the output type of bar).
# type a;;
type a
# type b;;
type b
# module Ex1 = struct
type s = A of a | B of b
let foo (a:a) = A a
let bar (input:s) = match input with
| A a -> foo a
| B b -> (* ... *) input
end;;
module Ex1 :
sig
type s = A of a | B of b
val foo : a -> s
val bar : s -> s
end
use polymorphic variants:
# module Ex2 = struct
type s = [ `A of a | `B of b ]
let foo (`A a) = `A a
let bar (input:s) = match input with
| `A _ as a -> foo a
| `B b -> (* ... *) input
end;;
module Ex2 :
sig
type s = [ `A of a | `B of b ]
val foo : [< `A of 'a ] -> [> `A of 'a ]
val bar : s -> s
end
use GADTs:
# module Ex3 = struct
type _ s =
| A : a -> a s
| B : b -> b s
let foo (a: a s) : a s =
match a with
| A a -> A a
let bar: type x. x s -> x s = fun input ->
match input with
| A _ as a -> foo a
| B b -> (* ... *) input
end;;
module Ex3 :
sig
type _ s = A : a -> a s | B : b -> b s
val foo : a s -> a s
val bar : 'x s -> 'x s
end
Starting with your example, the solution would be simple:
type s = A of a | B of b
let foo (a:a) =
let bar (input:s) = match input with
| A a -> foo a
| B b -> ...
But constraint here is not needed. Looks like that you're misunderstanding the idea of type constraints. In general, in OCaml type constraints cannot affect the program. Programs with and without type constraints have the same behavior. So, here you don't need to put any constraints at all. You must think of type annotations only as a helper tool for programmer.
Update
I'm still not sure, that I understand what actually you want, but if you want to split your variants into subsets, and keep this split refutable, then, indeed, you can use polymorphic variants, as Pascal suggested.
Let me first rephrase the questions. Suppose I have type:
type t = A | B | C | D | E
and I have a pattern match
let f = function
| A | B | C as x -> handle_abc x
| D | E as x -> handle_de x
How can I prove to a compiler, that handle_abc takes only a subset of all possible constructors, namely A | B | C ?
The answer is, with regular variants it is impossible. But it is possible with polymorphic variants:
type t = [`A | `B | `C | `D | `E]
let f = function
| `A | `B | `C as x -> handle_abc x
| `D | `E as -> handle_de x
So, handle_abc now needs only to pattern match on three variants, and don't need to have any redundant matches. Moreover, you can give names to a groups of constructors, and pattern match on this names:
type abc = [`A | `B | `C ]
type de = [`D | `E ]
type t = [ abc | de ]
let f = function
| #abc as x -> handle_abc x
| #de as -> handle_de x
As a real world example, you can take a look at BAP project where polymorphic variants are used to represent instruction code. Here we split all codes into different subgroups, like all move instructions, all branch instructions and so on. And later we can pattern match on the groups directly.
One solution, that incurs a runtime cost, would be to have the variants wrap tuples instead of individual values. Then it's easier to capture the whole tuple and send it to a specialized function:
type s =
(* Note the extra parentheses! *)
| Foo of (int * string)
| Bar of (char * int * string)
let foo (i, s) = "foo"
let bar (c, i, s) = "bar"
let main input =
match input with
| Foo f -> foo f (* `f` is bound to a tuple of type `int * string` *)
| Bar b -> bar b (* `b` is bound to a tuple of type `char * int * string` *)
You would have to fill in the type in the question mark for the signature of Foo, and then use a match statement in it. The place where the question mark is denotes a type. In a way it is assisting the compiler by telling it what exact type you want, and it will strictly ensure that operations you carry out on a or input is of a matching type.
The match statement is not that redundant and does not hurt performance much as it is very efficient in OCaml. However we have another approach as below.
Alternatively if you only have one parameter, you could save some typing by doing function in place of match. For example:
let foo (c:s) = match c with ....
we can do
let foo = function
| A -> ...
| B -> ...
Note that the function word will only work if you have one parameter passed in (you could definitely wrap up all your parameters into a list and pass it in if you like)
Here's an additional example to get my point across:
type number = |Int of int
|Float of float
let to_int: (number -> int option) = function
| Int n -> Some n
| _ -> None
(*this is the same as *) (*also note that int option denotes return type*)
let to_int (input:number) : int option =
match input with
| Int n -> Some n
| _ -> None
(*notice how the first one does not have a input as a parameter name*)
let n1:number = Int 1;;
let n2:number = Int 2;;
Example use: `to_int(n1);`
Just to be clear, there isn't a need to fill it in, and type assists helps the programmer as well, and for me in some ambiguous cases helped make sure the compiler knew what I wanted. According to my professor a few semesters ago, it is a good practice to explicitly mention it to keep types in check.

Function with unknown value works. OCaml

I cant understand some things in my code. It is program in OCaml which generates all distinct pairs from elements in list. Here's my code:
let rec tmp f list x =
match list with
| [] -> x
| h :: t -> f h (tmp f t x);;
(* ^ ^ (^ ) (1) *)
let rec distinctpairs lst =
match lst with
| [] -> []
| h :: t -> tmp ( fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) t (distinctpairs t);;
(* ^ ^ (2) *)
Do function tmp returns three values ?
How i can give an argument to func, when i dont know what is x?
When i assume that tmp return three values, that why when I giving as arg to tmp the ( fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) argument, and it works?
1. Do function tmp returns three values ?
let rec tmp f list x =
match list with
| [] -> x
| h :: t -> f h (tmp f t x);;
The simple answer to this question is no.
f h (tmp f t x) is not three value, instead, it is a function execution/application on f.
2. How i can give an argument to func, when i dont know what is x?
let rec distinctpairs lst =
match lst with
| [] -> []
| h :: t -> tmp ( fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) t (distinctpairs t);;
The truth here is you know x. x is defined as a parameter of the anonymous function fun x lt -> (h, x)::lt.
When i assume that tmp return three values, that why when I giving as arg to tmp the ( fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) argument, and it works?
First of all, when ocaml sees tmp f list x, ocaml does not know anything but tmp accepts 3 parameters.
When ocaml reaches | [] -> x, it knows whatever type x is, the tmp will return the same type as x.
When ocaml reaches | h::t -> f h (tmp f t x), it knows f must be a function and f will have 2 parameters: one with type of h and one with type of x
Then in your distinctpairs function, ( fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) is an anonymous function which really matches the prediction above.
A better way to write the two functions:
let rec tmp f x = function
| [] -> []
| h :: t -> f h (tmp f x t)
let rec distinctpairs = function
| [] -> []
| h :: t -> tmp (fun x lt -> (h,x)::lt) (distinctpairs t) t
I also suggest you to read Real World Ocaml book. It is the newest and most comprehensive book on OCaml and it is good.
When you try to enter functional programming world, there is no shortcut. It is not like you learn Spanish as an English speaker. It is more like learning Chinese/Japanese as an English speaker.
The whole idea is quite different from Java or C# or C, and of course, much better than Java (my personal feeling). So I suggest you to learn from ground.

Generalized fold for inductive datatypes in coq

I've found myself repeating a pattern over and over again, and I'd like to abstract it. I'm fairly confident that coq is sufficiently expressive to capture the pattern, but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to do so. I'm defining a programming language, which has mutually recursive inductive datatypes representing the syntactic terms:
Inductive Expr : Set :=
| eLambda (x:TermVar) (e:Expr)
| eVar (x:TermVar)
| eAscribe (e:Expr) (t:IFType)
| ePlus (e1:Expr) (e2:Expr)
| ... many other forms ...
with DType : Set :=
| tArrow (x:TermVar) (t:DType) (c:Constraint) (t':DType)
| tInt
| ... many other forms ...
with Constraint : Set :=
| cEq (e1:Expr) (e2:Expr)
| ...
Now, there are a number of functions that I need to define over these types. For example, I'd like a function to find all of the free variables, a function to perform substitution, and a function to pull out the set of all constraints. These functions all have the following form:
Fixpoint doExpr (e:Expr) := match e with
(* one or two Interesting cases *)
| ...
(* lots and lots of boring cases,
** all of which just recurse on the subterms
** and then combine the results in the same way
*)
| ....
with doIFType (t:IFType) := match t with
(* same structure as above *)
with doConstraint (c:Constraint) := match c with
(* ditto *)
For example, to find free variables, I need to do something interesting in the variable cases and the cases that do binding, but for everything else I just recursively find all of the free variables of the subexpressions and then union those lists together. Similarly for the function that produces a list of all of the constraints. The substitution case is a little bit more tricky, because the result types of the three functions are different, and the constructors used to combine the subexpressions are also different:
Variable x:TermVar, v:Expr.
Fixpoint substInExpr (e:Expr) : **Expr** := match e with
(* interesting cases *)
| eLambda y e' =>
if x = y then eLambda y e' else eLambda y (substInExpr e')
| eVar y =>
if x = y then v else y
(* boring cases *)
| eAscribe e' t => **eAscribe** (substInExpr e') (substInType t)
| ePlus e1 e2 => **ePlus** (substInExpr e1) (substInExpr e2)
| ...
with substInType (t:Type) : **Type** := match t with ...
with substInConstraint (c:Constraint) : **Constraint** := ...
.
Writing these functions is tedious and error prone, because I have to write out all of the uninteresting cases for each function, and I need to make sure I recurse on all of the subterms. What I would like to write is something like the following:
Fixpoint freeVars X:syntax := match X with
| syntaxExpr eVar x => [x]
| syntaxExpr eLambda x e => remove x (freeVars e)
| syntaxType tArrow x t1 c t2 => remove x (freeVars t1)++(freeVars c)++(freeVars t2)
| _ _ args => fold (++) (map freeVars args)
end.
Variable x:TermVar, v:Expr.
Fixpoint subst X:syntax := match X with
| syntaxExpr eVar y => if y = x then v else eVar y
| syntaxExpr eLambda y e => eLambda y (if y = x then e else (subst e))
| syntaxType tArrow ...
| _ cons args => cons (map subst args)
end.
The key to this idea is the ability to generally apply a constructor to some number of arguments, and to have some kind of "map" that that preserves the type and number of arguments.
Clearly this pseudocode doesn't work, because the _ cases just aren't right. So my question is, is it possible to write code that is organized this way, or am I doomed to just manually listing out all of the boring cases?
Here's another way, though it's not everyone's cup of tea.
The idea is to move recursion out of the types and the evaluators, parameterizing it instead, and turning your expression values into folds. This offers convenience in some ways, but more effort in others -- it's really a question of where you end up spending the most time. The nice aspect is that evaluators can be easy to write, and you won't have to deal with mutually recursive definitions. However, some things that are simpler the other way can become brain-twisters in this style.
Require Import Ssreflect.ssreflect.
Require Import Ssreflect.ssrbool.
Require Import Ssreflect.eqtype.
Require Import Ssreflect.seq.
Require Import Ssreflect.ssrnat.
Inductive ExprF (d : (Type -> Type) -> Type -> Type)
(c : Type -> Type) (e : Type) : Type :=
| eLambda (x:nat) (e':e)
| eVar (x:nat)
| eAscribe (e':e) (t:d c e)
| ePlus (e1:e) (e2:e).
Inductive DTypeF (c : Type -> Type) (e : Type) : Type :=
| tArrow (x:nat) (t:e) (c':c e) (t':e)
| tInt.
Inductive ConstraintF (e : Type) : Type :=
| cEq (e1:e) (e2:e).
Definition Mu (f : Type -> Type) := forall a, (f a -> a) -> a.
Definition Constraint := Mu ConstraintF.
Definition DType := Mu (DTypeF ConstraintF).
Definition Expr := Mu (ExprF DTypeF ConstraintF).
Definition substInExpr (x:nat) (v:Expr) (e':Expr) : Expr := fun a phi =>
e' a (fun e => match e return a with
(* interesting cases *)
| eLambda y e' =>
if (x == y) then e' else phi e
| eVar y =>
if (x == y) then v _ phi else phi e
(* boring cases *)
| _ => phi e
end).
Definition varNum (x:ExprF DTypeF ConstraintF nat) : nat :=
match x with
| eLambda _ e => e
| eVar y => y
| _ => 0
end.
Compute (substInExpr 2 (fun a psi => psi (eVar _ _ _ 3))
(fun _ phi =>
phi (eLambda _ _ _ 1 (phi (eVar _ _ _ 2)))))
nat varNum.
Compute (substInExpr 1 (fun a psi => psi (eVar _ _ _ 3))
(fun _ phi =>
phi (eLambda _ _ _ 1 (phi (eVar _ _ _ 2)))))
nat varNum.
Here is a way to go, but it does not give very readable code: use tactics.
Let's say I have a language with many constructors of various arity, and I want to apply a specific goal only to the case given by constructor aaa, and I want to traverse all the other constructors, to get down to the aaa's that may appear under them. I can do the following:
Say you want to define a function A -> B (A is the type of the language), you will need to keep track of what case you are in,
so you should define a phantom type over A, reducing to B.
Definition phant (x : A) : Type := B.
I suppose that the union function has type B -> B -> B and that you have a default value in B, called empty_B
Ltac generic_process f acc :=
match goal with
|- context [phan (aaa _)] => (* assume aaa has arith 1 *)
intros val_of_aaa_component; exact process_this_value val_of_aaa_component
| |- _ =>
(* This should be used when the next argument of the current
constructor is in type A, you want to process recursively
down this argument, using the function f, and keep this result
in the accumulator. *)
let v := fresh "val_in_A" in
intros v; generic_process f (union acc (f v))
(* This clause will fail if val_in_A is not in type A *)
| |- _ => let v := fresh "val_not_in_A" in
(* This should be used when the next argument of the current
constructor is not in type A, you want to ignore it *)
intros v; generic_process f acc
| |- phant _ =>
(* this rule should be used at the end, when all
the arguments of the constructor have been used. *)
exact acc
end.
Now, you define the function by a proof. Let's say the function is called process_aaa.
Definition process_aaa (x : A) : phant x.
fix process_aaa 1.
(* This adds process_add : forall x:A, phant x. in the context. *)
intros x; case x; generic_process process_aaa empty_B.
Defined.
Note that the definition of generic_process only mention one constructor by name, aaa, all others
are treated in a systematic way. We use the type information to detect those sub-components in which we want to perform a recursive descent. If you have several mutually inductive types, you can add arguments to the generic_process function to indicate which function will be used for each type and have more clauses, one for each argument of each type.
Here is a test of this idea, where the language has 4 constructors, values to be processed are the ones that appear in the constructor var and the type nat is also used in another constructor (c2). We use the type of lists of natural numbers as the type B, with nil as the empty and singleton lists as result when encountering variables. The function collects all occurrences of var.
Require Import List.
Inductive expr : Type :=
var : nat -> expr
| c1 : expr -> expr -> expr -> expr
| c2 : expr -> nat -> expr
| c3 : expr -> expr -> expr
| c4 : expr -> expr -> expr
.
Definition phant (x : expr) : Type := list nat.
Definition union := (#List.app nat).
Ltac generic_process f acc :=
match goal with
|- context[phant (var _)] => exact (fun y => y::nil)
| |- _ => let v := fresh "val_in_expr" in
intros v; generic_process f (union acc (f v))
| |- _ => let v := fresh "val_not_in_expr" in
intros v; generic_process f acc
| |- phant _ => exact acc
end.
Definition collect_vars : forall x : expr, phant x.
fix collect_vars 1.
intros x; case x; generic_process collect_vars (#nil nat).
Defined.
Compute collect_vars (c1 (var 0) (c2 (var 4) 1)
(c3 (var 2) (var 3))).
The last computation returns a list containing values 0 4 2 and 3 as expected, but not 1, which did not occur inside a var constructor.