leanprover / leanprover/lean4

`grind` is defeated by trivial `List` goal

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bug P-medium
Dominant language
Lean
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Description

Prerequisites
Description

grind fails to prove the following goal:

example {l : List Nat} : l ++ [0] ≠ [] := by
  grind

This fails running out of ematching rounds, with the diagnostics pointing at the lemmas List.append_assoc and List.cons_append. Removing them from the grind set causes grind to no longer run into the threshold, but it still fails to prove the goal.

I'm sorry if this is out of scope for grind, but it seems simple enough that grind ought to be able to do it.

Expected behavior: grind proves the goal.

Actual behavior: grind fails

Versions

Lean 4.30.0-nightly-2026-03-09 on live.lean-lang.org

Impact

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Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the minimal List Nat example with grind on the reported Lean nightly version, then inspect how the tactic handles List.append_assoc and List.cons_append during ematching. Done means grind proves l ++ [0] ≠ [] without exhausting its ematching-round threshold.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
55/100

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