We will briefly introduce the concept of binding.
To describe binding, we need definitions for
bound variables,
free variables, and
substitution for free variables.
Informally, the -term
has a binding occurrence
of the variable
, and the scope of
is
:
Any occurrence of
in
is bound.
Note that binding occurs for the smallest scope,
eg. in
, the
in the body of
is bound by that binding occurrence of
rather than the binding
occurrence in the outer
-expression.
A free variable is one that is not bound.
The substitution of for a free variable
in
is denoted by
.
Informally, any free occurrence of
in
is replaced by
.
It is important, however, that no free variable of
becomes bound in
.