Type inhabitation

In type theory, a branch of mathematical logic, in a given typed calculus, the type inhabitation problem for this calculus is the following problem:^[1] given a type and a typing environment , does there exist a -term M such that ? With an empty type environment, such an M is said to be an inhabitant of .

Relationship to logic

In the case of simply typed lambda calculus, a type has an inhabitant if and only if its corresponding proposition is a tautology of minimal implicative logic. Similarly, a System F type has an inhabitant if and only if its corresponding proposition is a tautology of second-order logic.

Formal properties

For most typed calculi, the type inhabitation problem is very hard. Richard Statman proved that for simply typed lambda calculus the type inhabitation problem is PSPACE-complete. For other calculi, like System F, the problem is even undecidable.

See also

• Curry–Howard isomorphism

References