[Agda] Re: Insightful let's and where's

[Darryl McAdams]

It's about what's visible in the context, not what's usable. Obviously let and where things are usable. But neither show up in the context when you do C-c C-,



Notice, Guillaume, that you have x : .A, but not y : .A. This is acceptable in some situations, but not in others. It's often very useful to be able to write in a forward chaining style locally, and be able to see that you've done this without having to search through code. Note that you can obviously fake it using lambdas:

foo x = (\y -> {! !}) x

which you can abstract out into a silly thing:

    better-let : (A : Set) {B : Set} → (A → B) → A → B
    better-let A f x = f x
    
    syntax better-let A (λ x → y) z = better-let x :: A := z , y

which lets you now write

foo x = better-let y :: A := x , {! !}

but this is silly. lets and where's are very simple context extending things that ought to really be visible in their scopes.
 
- darryl


________________________________
 From: Francesco Mazzoli <f at mazzo.li>
To: Guillaume Brunerie <guillaume.brunerie at gmail.com> 
Cc: agda list <agda at lists.chalmers.se> 
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Agda] Re: Insightful let's and where's
 

At Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:09:28 +0200,
Guillaume Brunerie wrote:
> If I write the following:
> 
>     foo : forall {A : Set} -> A -> A
>     foo x = let y = x in {! y !}
> 
> Then C-c C-l to load the file and C-c C-. in the goal to get the type of
> the content of the goal and the type expected, I get:
> 
>     Goal: .A
>     Have: .A
>     -------------------
>     x : .A
>     .A : Set
> 
> (in particular, y is recognized as something of type A)
> Moreover,
 C-c C-space replaces the goal by y, as expected.
> 
> So what do you mean by "y does not show up in the goal"?
> Maybe you mean that it does not show up in the *context*, but I don't find
> that particularly annoying given that (at least for where) the type is
> written is full a few lines below anyway, and for let you can ask Agda the
> type of any term with C-c C-d or C-c C-.

Yep, I’m pretty sure that what Darryl was referring too was the fact
that “let”-bound variables do not show up in the context—I find myself
annoyed by that too, although as you say it is not essential.

Since the Emacs window is titled “*Goal type etc.*” I just call that
whole listing “goal”, but I agree that “context” is more accurate.

Francesco
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