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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16

Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean

Authors: Ekaterina Zhuchko, Hendrik Maarand, Margus Veanes, and Gabriel Ebner

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 352, 16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025)

Abstract

Brzozowski proved that the set of derivatives of any regular expression is finite modulo associativity, idempotence and, notably, commutativity of the union operator. We extend this result to the case of symbolic location based derivatives, for which we prove finiteness of the state space by quotienting only by associativity, deduplication and idempotence (ADI); the fact that we don't use commutativity allows for this result to carry over to the derivative based backtracking (PCRE) match semantics, where the union operator is noncommutative. Furthermore, we consider regular expressions extended with lookarounds, intersection, and negation. We also show that our method for proving finiteness allows us to include certain simplification rules in the derivative operation while preserving finiteness. The finiteness proof is constructive: given an expression R, we construct a finite set that is an overapproximation (modulo ADI) of the set of derivatives of R. We reuse some of the infrastructure provided in previous formalization efforts for regular expressions in Lean 4, showing the flexibility and reusability of the framework.

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Ekaterina Zhuchko, Hendrik Maarand, Margus Veanes, and Gabriel Ebner. Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean. In 16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 352, pp. 16:1-16:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{zhuchko_et_al:LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16,
  author =	{Zhuchko, Ekaterina and Maarand, Hendrik and Veanes, Margus and Ebner, Gabriel},
  title =	{{Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean}},
  booktitle =	{16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-396-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{352},
  editor =	{Forster, Yannick and Keller, Chantal},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-246144},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Lean, regular languages, lookarounds, derivatives, finiteness}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2023.24

An Extensible User Interface for Lean 4

Authors: Wojciech Nawrocki, Edward W. Ayers, and Gabriel Ebner

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 268, 14th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2023)

Abstract

Contemporary proof assistants rely on complex automation and process libraries with millions of lines of code. At these scales, understanding the emergent interactions between components can be a serious challenge. One way of managing complexity, long established in informal practice, is through varying external representations. For instance, algebraic notation facilitates term-based reasoning whereas geometric diagrams invoke spatial intuition. Objects viewed one way become much simpler than when viewed differently. In contrast, modern general-purpose ITP systems usually only support limited, textual representations. Treating this as a problem of human-computer interaction, we aim to demonstrate that presentations - UI elements that store references to the objects they are displaying - are a fruitful way of thinking about ITP interface design. They allow us to make headway on two fronts - introspection of prover internals and support for diagrammatic reasoning. To this end we have built an extensible user interface for the Lean 4 prover with an associated ProofWidgets 4 library of presentation-based UI components. We demonstrate the system with several examples including type information popups, structured traces, contextual suggestions, a display for algebraic reasoning, and visualizations of red-black trees. Our interface is already part of the core Lean distribution.

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Wojciech Nawrocki, Edward W. Ayers, and Gabriel Ebner. An Extensible User Interface for Lean 4. In 14th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 268, pp. 24:1-24:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{nawrocki_et_al:LIPIcs.ITP.2023.24,
  author =	{Nawrocki, Wojciech and Ayers, Edward W. and Ebner, Gabriel},
  title =	{{An Extensible User Interface for Lean 4}},
  booktitle =	{14th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2023)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-284-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{268},
  editor =	{Naumowicz, Adam and Thiemann, Ren\'{e}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2023.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-183991},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2023.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: user interfaces, human-computer interaction, Lean}
}

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Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean

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An Extensible User Interface for Lean 4

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