racket / racket/redex

Redex long tutorial beta-eta equivalence is false

Open
#270 13 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Racket
Stars
112
Forks
42
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Consider the following term in the language of Lambda from https://docs.racket-lang.org/redex/redex2015.html : ((lambda () ((lambda (x) 1))) 2). This term is not beta-equivalent to anything, because it's stuck. But it is eta-equivalent to ((lambda (x) 1) 2) which beta-reduces to 1. So the statement in the tutorial

The βη semantics is equivalent to the β variant. Formulate this theorem as a metafunction. Use redex-check to test your theorem.

is wrong.

This error was found by random testing, here: http://drdr.racket-lang.org/69138/racket/share/pkgs/redex-doc/redex/scribblings/long-tut/code/lab-tue-mor.rkt

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

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

Read the long tutorial section containing the βη-equivalence statement and inspect redex-doc/redex/scribblings/long-tut/code/lab-tue-mor.rkt, where random testing found the counterexample. Verify the stated equivalence against the supplied stuck term and determine the corrected tutorial claim or test expectation. Done means the tutorial no longer presents this false theorem.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
compilers, documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.