leanprover / leanprover/lean4

RFC: Mutual structural recursion to support non-matching functions

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P-low RFC
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Description

Prerequisites

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Description

Mutually recursive functions cannot use structural recursion when one of the functions does not match on the inductive type.

Steps to Reproduce
mutual

def foo : Nat → Nat
  | 0 => 0
  | n + 1 => bar n
  termination_by structural n => n

def bar (n : Nat) : Nat :=
  foo n + 1

end

Expected behavior: Code succeeds with no errors.

Actual behavior: The following error:

error: failed to infer structural recursion:
Cannot use parameters #1 of foo and n of bar:
  failed to eliminate recursive application
    foo n
Versions

Lean 4.19.0-rc2

Impact

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Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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 running the minimal mutual-recursion example from the issue against the stated Lean 4.19.0-rc2 version and confirm the structural-recursion error. Investigate the structural recursion handling for mutually recursive definitions; done means the example compiles successfully without the reported error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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