lean2/doc/lean/lexical.md
Leonardo de Moura f27105d17f doc(doc/lean): lexical conventions
Signed-off-by: Leonardo de Moura <leonardo@microsoft.com>
2013-12-23 22:50:13 -08:00

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Lexical conventions

Reserved keywords

This is the list of reserved keywords in Lean: Axiom, Check, Coercion, Definition, Echo, EndScope, Environment, Eval, Exit, Help, Import, Infix, Infixr, Notation, Options, Pi, Pop, Push, Scope, Show, Theorem, Type, Universe, Variable, Variables, by, exists, forall, fun, in, let, show

Remark: Lean commands always start with a upper case letter.

The following symbols are also reserved: ->, ==, Π, λ, , , , _, ,, ., :, (, ), {, }

Identifiers

Lean identifiers are divided in 3 categories.

In the first category, identifiers are of the form [a-zA-Z_'@][a-zA-Z0-9_'@]*. Here are examples of valid identifiers in this category: fact, sin, move_front, f1, @cast, and A'.

In Lean, we support hierarchical identifiers. A hierarchical is essentially a sequence of category 1 identifiers separated by ::. We use hierarchical names to simulate modules in Lean. Here are some examples: mod::x, foo::bla::1.

In the second category, we have any non empty sequence of the following characters: =, <, >, ^, |, &, ~, +, -, *, /, \\, $, %, ?, ;, [, ], #. Here are examples of indentifiers in this category: ==, ++, <<==.

In the third category, we have any non empty sequence of non-ascii characters. Here are some examples: , , and ¬.

This separation may seem adhoc, the main motivation is to minimize the number of white spaces in Lean files. For example, we can write x+y*z instead of x + y * z.

We usually use category 1 identifiers to name variable declarations, definitions, axioms and theorems. Category 2 and 3 are usually used to define notation, i.e., symbolic abbreviations denoting terms. For example, the integer addition is named Int::add, and real addition Real::add. The symbol + is notation for both of them.

Numerals

Natural numbers are of the form [0-9]+, and decimal numbers are of the form [0-9]+.[0-9]*. Natural numbers have type Nat, and decimal numbers have type Real. Lean automatically introduce coercions when needed.

Strings

Strings are defined as usual as "[any sequence of characters excluded "]".