Coq Extraction ============== What is it ? ------------ The extraction is a mechanism allowing to produce functional code (Ocaml/Haskell/Scheme) out of any Coq terms (either programs or proofs). Who did it ? ------------ The current implementation (from version 7.0 up to now) has been done by P. Letouzey during his PhD, helped by J.C. Filliâtre and supervised by C. Paulin. An earlier implementation (versions 6.x) was due to B. Werner and C. Paulin. Where can we find more information ? ------------------------------------ - Coq Reference Manual includes a full chapter about extraction - P. Letouzey's PhD thesis [3] forms a complete document about both theory and implementation and test-cases of Coq-extraction - A more recent article [4] proposes a short overview of extraction - earlier documents [1] [2] may also be useful. Why a complete re-implementation ? ---------------------------------- Extraction code has been completely rewritten since version V6.3. 1) Principles The main goal of the new extraction is to handle any Coq term, even those upon sort Type, and to produce code that always compiles. Thus it will never answer something like "Not an ML type", but rather a dummy term like the ML unit. Translation between Coq and ML is based upon the following principles: - Terms of sort Prop don't have any computational meaning, so they are merged into one ML term "__". This part is done according to P. Letouzey's works [1] and [2]. This dummy constant "__" used to be implemented by the unit (), but we recently found that this constant might be applied in some cases. So "__" is now in Ocaml a fixpoint that forgets its arguments: let __ = let rec f _ = Obj.repr f in Obj.repr f - Terms that are type schemes (i.e. something of type ( : )( : )...s with s a sort ) don't have any ML counterpart at the term level, since they are types transformers. In fact they do not have any computational meaning either. So we also merge them into that dummy term "__". - A Coq term gives a ML term or a ML type depending of its type: type schemes will (try to) give ML types, and all other terms give ML terms. And the rest of the translation is (almost) straightforward: an inductive gives an inductive, etc... This gives ML code that have no special reason to typecheck, due to the incompatibilities between Coq and ML typing systems. In fact most of the time everything goes right. We now verify during extraction that the produced code is typecheckable, and if it is not we insert unsafe type casting at critical points in the code, with either "Obj.magic" in Ocaml or "unsafeCoerce" in Haskell. 2) Differences with previous extraction (V6.3 and before) 2.a) The pros The ability to extract every Coq term, as explain in the previous paragraph. The ability to extract from a file an ML module (cf Extraction Library in the documentation) You can have a taste of extraction directly at the toplevel by using the "Extraction " or the "Recursive Extraction ". This toplevel extraction was already there in V6.3, but was printing Fw terms. It now prints in the language of your choice: Ocaml, Haskell or Scheme. The optimization done on extracted code has been ported between V6.3 and V7 and enhanced, and in particular the mechanism of automatic expansion. 2.b) The cons The presence of some parasite "__" as dummy arguments in functions. This denotes the rests of a proof part. The previous extraction was able to remove them totally. The current implementation removes a good deal of them, but not all. This problem is due to extraction upon Type. For example, let's take this pathological term: (if b then Set else Prop) : Type The only way to know if this is an Set (to keep) or a Prop (to remove) is to compute the boolean b, and we do not want to do that during extraction. There is no more "ML import" feature. You can compensate by using Axioms, and then "Extract Constant ..." [1]: Exécution de termes de preuves: une nouvelle méthode d'extraction pour le Calcul des Constructions Inductives, Pierre Letouzey, DEA thesis, 2000, http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~letouzey/download/rapport_dea.ps.gz [2]: A New Extraction for Coq, Pierre Letouzey, Types 2002 Post-Workshop Proceedings. http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~letouzey/download/extraction2002.ps.gz [3]: Programmation fonctionnelle certifiée: l'extraction de programmes dans l'assistant Coq. Pierre Letouzey, PhD thesis, 2004. http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~letouzey/download/these_letouzey.ps.gz http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~letouzey/download/these_letouzey_English.ps.gz [4]: Coq Extraction, An overview. Pierre Letouzey. CiE2008. http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~letouzey/download/letouzey_extr_cie08.pdf