Howdy, y'all!

I've written a small program that takes a (Haskell) type
and gives you back a function of that type if one exists.
It's kind of fun, so I thought I'd share it.

It's probably best explained with a sample session.

  calvin% djinn
  Welcome to Djinn version 2005-12-11.
  Type :h to get help.
# Djinn is interactive if not given any arguments.
# Let's see if it can find the identity function.
  Djinn> f ? a->a
  f :: a -> a
  f x1 = x1
# Yes, that was easy.  Let's try some tuple munging.
  Djinn> sel ? ((a,b),(c,d)) -> (b,c)
  sel :: ((a, b), (c, d)) -> (b, c)
  sel ((_, v5), (v6, _)) = (v5, v6)

# We can ask for the impossible, but then we get what we
# deserve.
  Djinn> cast ? a->b
  -- cast cannot be realized.

# OK, let's be bold and try some functions that are tricky to write:
# return, bind, and callCC in the continuation monad
  Djinn> type C a = (a -> r) -> r
  Djinn> returnC ? a -> C a
  returnC :: a -> C a
  returnC x1 x2 = x2 x1

  Djinn> bindC ? C a -> (a -> C b) -> C b
  bindC :: C a -> (a -> C b) -> C b
  bindC x1 x2 x3 = x1 (\ c15 -> x2 c15 (\ c17 -> x3 c17))

  Djinn> callCC ? ((a -> C b) -> C a) -> C a
  callCC :: ((a -> C b) -> C a) -> C a
  callCC x1 x2 = x1 (\ c15 _ -> x2 c15) (\ c11 -> x2 c11)
# Well, poor Djinn has a sweaty brow after deducing the code
# for callCC so we had better quit.
  Djinn> :q
  Bye.


To play with Djinn do a
  darcs get http://darcs.augustsson.net/Darcs/Djinn
or get
  http://darcs.augustsson.net/Darcs/Djinn/Djinn.tar.gz
Then just type make.  (You need a Haskell 98 implementation and
some libraries.)  And then start djinn.

For the curious, Djinn uses a decision procedure for intuitionistic
propositional calculus due to Roy Dyckhoff.  It's a variation of
Gentzen's LJ system.  This means that (in theory) Djinn will always
find a function if one exists, and if one doesn't exist Djinn will
terminate telling you so.

This is the very first version, so expect bugs. :)

Share and enjoy.

        -- Lennart

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