8.2. Rewrite Rules
The simplifier has three kinds of rewrite rules:
- Declarations to unfold
The simplifier will only unfold reducible definitions by default. However, a rewrite rule can be added for any semi-reducible or irreducible definition that causes the simplifier to unfold it as well. When the simplifier is running in definitional mode (
dsimpand its variants), definition unfolding only replaces the defined name with its value; otherwise, it also uses the equational lemmas produced by the equation compiler.- Equational lemmas
The simplifier can treat equality proofs as rewrite rules, in which case the left side of the equality will be replaced with the right. These equational lemmas may have any number of parameters. The simplifier instantiates parameters to make the left side of the equality match the goal, and it performs a proof search to instantiate any additional parameters.
- Simplification procedures
The simplifier supports simplification procedures, known as simprocs, that use Lean metaprogramming to perform rewrites that can't be efficiently specified using equations. Lean includes simprocs for the most important operations on built-in types.
Due to propositional extensionality, equational lemmas can rewrite propositions to simpler, logically equivalent propositions.
When the simplifier rewrites a proof goal to True, it automatically closes it.
As a special case of equational lemmas, propositions other than equality can be tagged as rewrite rules
They are preprocessed into rules that rewrite the proposition to True.
Rewriting Propositions
When asked to simplify an equality of pairs:
α:Typeβ:Typew:αy:αx:βz:β⊢ w = y ∧ x = z yields a conjunction of equalities:
The default simp set contains Prod.mk.injEq, which shows the equivalence of the two statements:
Prod.mk.injEq.{u, v} {α : Type u} {β : Type v} (fst : α) (snd : β) :
∀ (fst_1 : α) (snd_1 : β),
((fst, snd) = (fst_1, snd_1)) = (fst = fst_1 ∧ snd = snd_1)
In addition to rewrite rules, simp has a number of built-in reduction rules, controlled by the config parameter.
Even when the simp set is empty, simp can replace let-bound variables with their values, reduce Lean.Parser.Term.match : termPattern matching. `match e, ... with | p, ... => f | ...` matches each given
term `e` against each pattern `p` of a match alternative. When all patterns
of an alternative match, the `match` term evaluates to the value of the
corresponding right-hand side `f` with the pattern variables bound to the
respective matched values.
If used as `match h : e, ... with | p, ... => f | ...`, `h : e = p` is available
within `f`.
When not constructing a proof, `match` does not automatically substitute variables
matched on in dependent variables' types. Use `match (generalizing := true) ...` to
enforce this.
Syntax quotations can also be used in a pattern match.
This matches a `Syntax` value against quotations, pattern variables, or `_`.
Quoted identifiers only match identical identifiers - custom matching such as by the preresolved
names only should be done explicitly.
`Syntax.atom`s are ignored during matching by default except when part of a built-in literal.
For users introducing new atoms, we recommend wrapping them in dedicated syntax kinds if they
should participate in matching.
For example, in
```lean
syntax "c" ("foo" <|> "bar") ...
```
`foo` and `bar` are indistinguishable during matching, but in
```lean
syntax foo := "foo"
syntax "c" (foo <|> "bar") ...
```
they are not.
match expressions whose scrutinees are constructor applications, reduce structure projections applied to constructors, or apply lambdas to their arguments.