Game Semantics and Uniqueness of Type Inhabitance in the Simply-Typed λ-Calculus

Abstract. The problem of characterizing sequents for which there is a unique proof in intuitionistic logic was first raised by Mints [Min77], initially studied in [BS82] and later in [Aot99]. We address this problem through game semantics and give a new and concise proof of [Aot99]. We also fully characterize a family of λ-terms for Aoto’s theorem. The use of games also leads to a new characterization of principal typings for simply-typed λ-terms. These results show that game models can help proving strong structural properties in the simply-typed λ-calculus

Which simple types have a unique inhabitant?

International audienceWe study the question of whether a given type has a unique inhabitant modulo program equivalence. In the setting of simply-typed lambda-calculus with sums, equipped with the strong βη-equivalence, we show that uniqueness is decidable. We present a saturating focused logic that introduces irreducible cuts on positive types "as soon as possible". Backward search in this logic gives an effective algorithm that returns either zero, one or two distinct inhabitants for any given type. Preliminary application studies show that such a feature can be useful in strongly-typed programs, inferring the code of highly-polymorphic library functions, or "glue code" inside more complex terms