1 unstable release
0.1.0 | Nov 28, 2020 |
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#2200 in Rust patterns
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RusTollens - Type-level Boolean for Logic
A small and experimental Rust library with a type-level representation of booleans with companion connectives for compile-time sort-of fun with logic.
type Tollens<P, Q> = Imp<And<Imp<P, Q>, Not<Q>>, Not<P>>;
fn what_is_reality<T: Truth>() {}
what_is_reality::<Or<True, Not<True>>>();
The intuition behind it is as follows:
Consider the trait Negation
:
trait Negation {
type Output;
}
Notice the lack of associated functions, it only has an associated type.
And the implementation of Negation
for the types True
and False
:
struct True;
struct False;
impl Negation for True {
type Output = False
}
impl Negation for False {
type Output = True
}
We may treat Negation
as a piece-wise function from types to types, where Self
would be the input and Output
the output, each combination of input types gives rise to a function (impl
). In pseudo-code:
negation(True) = False
negation(False) = True
A function with more inputs would correspond to a trait with generic parameters, such as Conjunction
defined below:
trait Conjunction<L> {
type Output;
}
Where we would now need four impl
s to exhaust the four combinations of True
and False
, for instance:
impl Conjunction<True> for False {
// False AND True IS False
type Output = False;
}
RusTollens builds on top of these ideas to compute simple logical statements at the type-level, statically at compile-time.
Fairly likely not an amazingly applicable library, still the idea of encoding invariants at type-level such that the compiler can verify on our behalf them is incredibly powerful. Therefore, this small experiment aims to give some more food for thought and invite the reader to explore and appreciate Rust's type-system to its maximum.