Simply typed lambda calculus with failure, in Haskell

Question

I\'m a newcomer to Haskell, so apologies if this question doesn\'t make too much sense.

I want to be able to implement simply typed lambda expressions in Haskell in

Answer 1

Pretty standard stuff. Just write a type-checker, and only evaluate the term when it typechecks. evalMay does this. You can of course enrich the set of constants and base types; I just used one of each for simplicity.

import Control.Applicative ((<$), (<$>))
import Control.Monad (guard)
import Safe (atMay)

data Type
    = Base
    | Arrow Type Type
    deriving (Eq, Ord, Read, Show)

data Term
    = Const
    | Var Int -- deBruijn indexing; the nearest enclosing lambda binds Var 0
    | Lam Type Term
    | App Term Term
    deriving (Eq, Ord, Read, Show)

check :: [Type] -> Term -> Maybe Type
check env Const = return Base
check env (Var v) = atMay env v
check env (Lam ty tm) = Arrow ty <$> check (ty:env) tm
check env (App tm tm') = do
    Arrow i o <- check env tm
    i' <- check env tm'
    guard (i == i')
    return o

eval :: Term -> Term
eval (App tm tm') = case eval tm of
    Lam _ body -> eval (subst 0 tm' body)
eval v = v

subst :: Int -> Term -> Term -> Term
subst n tm Const = Const
subst n tm (Var m) = case compare m n of
    LT -> Var m
    EQ -> tm
    GT -> Var (m-1)
subst n tm (Lam ty body) = Lam ty (subst (n+1) tm body)
subst n tm (App tm' tm'') = App (subst n tm tm') (subst n tm tm'')

evalMay :: Term -> Maybe Term
evalMay tm = eval tm <$ check [] tm