*Induction Principles for All Variants

We've now seen induction principles for nat, list, and bintree. Generalizing from what we've seen, each constructor of a variant either generates a base case for the inductive proof, or an inductive case. And, if a constructor itself carries values of that data type, each of those values generates in inductive hypothesis. For example:

• Z, [], and Leaf all generated base cases.

• S, ::, and Node all generated inductive cases.

• S and :: each generated one IH, because each carries one value of the data type.

• Node generated two IHs, because it carries two values of the data type.

Suppose we have these types to represent the AST for expressions in a simple language with integers, Booleans, unary operators, and binary operators:

type uop =
| UMinus

type bop =
| BPlus
| BMinus

type expr =
| Int of int
| Bool of bool
| Unop of uop * expr
| Binop of expr * bop * expr


The induction principle for expr is:

forall properties P,
if forall i, P(Int i)
and forall b, P(Bool b)
and forall u e, P(e) implies P(Unop (u, e))
and forall b e1 e2, (P(e1) and P(e2)) implies P(Binop (e1, b, e2))
then forall e, P(e)


There are two base cases, corresponding to the two constructors that don't carry an expr. There are two inductive cases, corresponding to the two constructors that do carry exprs. Unop gets one IH, whereas Binop gets two IHs, because of the number of exprs that each carries.