A Type Checker for a Logical Framework with Union and Intersection Types

We present the syntax, semantics, and typing rules of Bull, a prototype theorem prover based on the Delta-Framework, i.e. a fully-typed lambda-calculus decorated with union and intersection types, as described in previous papers by the authors. Bull also implements a subtyping algorithm for the Type Theory Xi of Barbanera-Dezani-de'Liguoro. Bull has a command-line interface where the user can declare axioms, terms, and perform computations and some basic terminal-style features like error pretty-printing, subexpressions highlighting, and file loading. Moreover, it can typecheck a proof or normalize it. These terms can be incomplete, therefore the typechecking algorithm uses unification to try to construct the missing subterms. Bull uses the syntax of Berardi's Pure Type Systems to improve the compactness and the modularity of the kernel. Abstract and concrete syntax are mostly aligned and similar to the concrete syntax of Coq. Bull uses a higher-order unification algorithm for terms, while typechecking and partial type inference are done by a bidirectional refinement algorithm, similar to the one found in Matita and Beluga. The refinement can be split into two parts: the essence refinement and the typing refinement. Binders are implemented using commonly-used de Bruijn indices. We have defined a concrete language syntax that will allow the user to write Delta-terms. We have defined the reduction rules and an evaluator. We have implemented from scratch a refiner which does partial typechecking and type reconstruction. We have experimented Bull with classical examples of the intersection and union literature, such as the ones formalized by Pfenning with his Refinement Types in LF. We hope that this research vein could be useful to experiment, in a proof theoretical setting, forms of polymorphism alternatives to Girard's parametric one

A Type Checker for a Logical Framework with Union and Intersection Types

International audienceWe present the syntax, semantics, typing, subtyping, unification, refinement, and REPL of Bull, a prototype theorem prover based on the ∆-Framework, i.e. a fully-typed Logical Framework à la Edinburgh LF decorated with union and intersection types, as described in previous papers by the authors. Bull also implements a subtyping algorithm for the Type Theory Ξ of Barbanera-Dezani-de'Liguoro. Bull has a command-line interface where the user can declare axioms, terms, and perform computations and some basic terminal-style features like error pretty-printing, subexpressions highlighting, and file loading. Moreover, it can typecheck a proof or normalize it. These terms can be incomplete, therefore the typechecking algorithm uses unification to try to construct the missing subterms. Bull uses the syntax of Berardi's Pure Type Systems to improve the compactness and the modularity of the kernel. Abstract and concrete syntax are mostly aligned and similar to the concrete syntax of Coq. Bull uses a higher-order unification algorithm for terms, while typechecking and partial type inference are done by a bidirectional refinement algorithm, similar to the one found in Matita and Beluga. The refinement can be split into two parts: the essence refinement and the typing refinement. Binders are implemented using commonly-used de Bruijn indices. We have defined a concrete language syntax that will allow user to write ∆-terms. We have defined the reduction rules and an evaluator. We have implemented from scratch a refiner which does partial typechecking and type reconstruction. We have experimented Bull with classical examples of the intersection and union literature, such as the ones formalized by Pfenning with his Refinement Types in LF and by Pierce. We hope that this research vein could be useful to experiment, in a proof theoretical setting, forms of polymorphism alternatives to Girard's parametric one

A Decidable Subtyping Logic for Intersection and Union Types

Part 3: Logic, Semantics, and Programming TheoryInternational audienceUsing Curry-Howard isomorphism, we extend the typed lambda-calculus with intersection and union types, and its corresponding proof-functional logic, previously defined by the authors, with subtyping and explicit coercions.We show the extension of the lambda-calculus to be isomorphic to the Barbanera-Dezani-de’Liguoro type assignment system and we provide a sound interpretation of the proof-functional logic with the $\mathsf {NJ}(\beta )$ logic, using Mints’ realizers.We finally present a sound and complete algorithm for subtyping in presence of intersection and union types. The algorithm is conceived to work for the (sub)type theory $\varXi$

A Decidable Subtyping Logic for Intersection and Union Types (full version)

Proof-functional logical connectives allow reasoning about the structure of logical proofs, in this way giving to the latter the status of first-class objects. This is in contrast to classical truth-functional connectives where the meaning of a compound formula is dependent only on the truth value of its subformulas. We present a proof-functional logic and we give a semantics using Mints' realizers accounting for intersection types, union types, and subtyping. The semantics interprets the type ω as the set universe, the → type as a function space, the ∩ and ∪ types as set intersection and set union, respectively, and the subtype relation as a subset operator. Using the proof-as-types and terms-as-propositions paradigms, we extend the typed calculus previously defined by the authors with a decidable subtyping relation and we show this calculus to be isomorphic to the Barbanera-Dezani-Ciancaglini-de'Liguoro type assignment system. A subtyping algorithm is presented and proved to be sound and complete. Hindley gave a subtyping algorithm for intersection types but, as far as we know, there is no system in the literature also including union types