lambda_calculus
lambda_calculus is a simple implementation of the untyped lambda calculus in Rust.
The data and operators follow the Church encoding. The terms are implemented using De Bruijn indices, but can also be displayed using the classic lambda notation. Library functions utilizing the fixed-point combinator use its call-by-value variant and are built for compatibility with as many β-reduction strategies as possible.
The library contains:
- Church numerals and arithmetic operations
- Church booleans
- Church pairs
- Church lists
- standard lambda terms and combinators
- a parser for lambda expressions with De Bruijn indices
- 7 β-reduction strategies with optional display of reduction steps
The implementation tries to find a compromise between the spirit of the lambda calculus and Rust's
best practices; the lambda Term
s implemented by the library are produced by functions (in order
to allow arbitrary application), but they are not Copy
able and the methods they provide allow
memory-friendly disassembly and referencing their internals.
Documentation
Example usage
code:
// DISPLAY_CLASSIC [@term.rs] = true;
// SHOW_REDUCTIONS [@reduction.rs] = true;
#[macro_use]
extern crate lambda_calculus;
use lambda_calculus::reduction::Order::*;
use lambda_calculus::arithmetic::pred;
fn main() {
let mut expr = app!(pred(), 1.into());
expr.beta(NOR, 0);
}
stdout:
β-reducing (λa. λb. λc. a (λd. λe. e (d b)) (λd. c) (λd. d)) (λa. λb. a b) [normal order]:
1. (λa. λb. λc. a (λd. λe. e (d b)) (λd. c) (λd. d)) (λa. λb. a b)
=> λa. λb. (λc. λd. c d) (λc. λd. d (c a)) (λc. b) (λc. c)
2. (λc. λd. c d) (λc. λd. d (c a))
=> λc. (λd. λe. e (d a)) c
3. (λc. (λd. λe. e (d a)) c) (λc. b)
=> (λc. λd. d (c a)) (λc. b)
4. (λc. λd. d (c a)) (λc. b)
=> λc. c ((λd. b) a)
5. (λc. c ((λd. b) a)) (λc. c)
=> (λc. c) ((λc. b) a)
6. (λc. c) ((λc. b) a)
=> (λc. b) a
7. (λc. b) a
=> b
result after 7 reductions: λa. λb. b
Status
The library is in a good shape and should soon begin to stabilize.
TODO
- a parser for classic lambda notation
- additional tests
- β-reduction parallelization (at least to some extent)?
- further optimizations