Intro.md

Introduction

Welcome to my Idris 2 tutorial. I'll try and treat as many aspects of the Idris 2 programming language as possible here. All .md files in here a literate Idris files: They consist of Markdown (hence the .md ending), which is being pretty printed by GitHub together with Idris code blocks, which can be type checked and built by the Idris compiler (more on this later). Note, however, that regular Idris source files use an .idr ending, and that you go with that file type unless you end up writing much more prose than code as I do at the moment. Later in this tutorial, you'll have to solve some exercises, the solutions of which can be found in the src/Solutions subfolder. There, I use regular .idr files.

Before we begin, make sure to install the Idris compiler on your system. Throughout this tutorial, I assume you installed the pack package manager and setup a skeleton package as described here. It is certainly possible to follow along with just the Idris compiler installed by other means, but some adjustments will be necessary when starting REPL sessions or building executables.

Every Idris source file should typically start with a module name plus some necessary imports, and this document is no exception:

module Tutorial.Intro

A module name consists of a list of identifiers separated by dots and must reflect the folder structure plus the module file's name.

About the Idris Programming Language

Idris is a pure, dependently typed, total functional programming language. I'll quickly explain each of these adjectives in this section.

Functional Programming

In functional programming languages, functions are first-class constructs, meaning that they can be assigned to variables, passed as arguments to other functions, and returned as results from functions. Unlike for instance in object-oriented programming languages, in functional programming, functions are the main form of abstraction. This means that whenever we find a common pattern or (almost) identical code in several parts of a project, we try to abstract over this in order to have to write the corresponding code only once. We do this by introducing one or more new functions implementing this behavior. Doing so, we often try to be as general as possible to make our functions as versatile to use as possible.

Functional programming languages are concerned with the evaluation of functions, unlike classical imperative languages, which are concerned with the execution of statements.

Pure Functional Programming

Pure functional programming languages come with an additional important guarantee: Functions don't have side effects like writing to a file or mutating global state. They can only compute a result from their arguments possibly by invoking other pure functions, and nothing else. As a consequence, given the same input, they will always generate the same output. This property is known as referential transparency.

Pure functions have several advantages:

• They can easily be tested by specifying (possibly randomly generated) sets of input arguments together with the expected results.

• They are thread-safe, since they don't mutate global state, and as such can be freely used in several computations running in parallel.

There are, of course, also some disadvantages:

• Some algorithms are hard to implement efficiently using only pure functions.

• Writing programs that actually do something (have some observable effect) is a bit trickier but certainly possible.

Dependent Types

Idris is a strongly, statically typed programming language. This means, that every Idris expression is given a type (for instance: integer, list of strings, boolean, function from integer to boolean, etc.) and types are verified at compile time to rule out certain common programming errors.

For instance, if a function expects an argument of type String (a sequence of unicode characters, such as "Hello123"), it is a type error to invoke this function with an argument of type Integer, and the Idris compiler will refuse to generate an executable from such an ill-typed program.

Being statically typed means that the Idris compiler will catch type errors at compile time, that is, before it generates an executable program that can be run. The opposite to this are dynamically typed languages such as Python, which check for type errors at runtime, that is, when a program is being executed. It is the philosophy of statically typed languages to catch as many type errors as possible before there even is a program that can be run.

Even more, Idris is dependently typed, which is one of its most characteristic properties in the landscape of programming languages. In Idris, types are first class: Types can be passed as arguments to functions, and functions can return types as their results. Even more, types can depend on other values. What this means, and why this is incredibly useful, we'll explore in due time.

Total Functions

A total function is a pure function, that is guaranteed to return a value of the expected return type for every possible input in a finite number of computational steps. A total function will never fail with an exception or loop infinitely, although it can still take arbitrarily long to compute its result

Idris comes with a totality checker built-in, which enables us to verify the functions we write to be provably total. Totality in Idris is opt-in, as in general, checking the totality of an arbitrary computer program is undecidable (see also the halting problem). However, if we annotate a function with the total keyword, Idris will fail with a type error, if its totality checker cannot verify that the function in question is indeed total.

Using the REPL

Idris comes with a useful REPL (an acronym for Read Evaluate Print Loop), which we will use for tinkering with small ideas, and for quickly experimenting with the code we just wrote. In order to start a REPL session, run the following command in a terminal:

pack repl

Idris should now be ready to accept you commands:

     ____    __     _         ___
    /  _/___/ /____(_)____   |__ \
    / // __  / ___/ / ___/   __/ /     Version 0.5.1-3c532ea35
  _/ // /_/ / /  / (__  )   / __/      https://www.idris-lang.org
 /___/\__,_/_/  /_/____/   /____/      Type :? for help

Welcome to Idris 2.  Enjoy yourself!
Main>

We can go ahead and enter some simple arithmetic expressions. Idris will evaluate these and print the result:

Main> 2 * 4
8
Main> 3 * (7 + 100)
321

Since every expression in Idris has an associated type, we might want to inspect these as well:

Main> :t 2
2 : Integer

Here :t is a command of the Idris REPL (it is not part of the Idris programming language), and it is used to inspect the type of an expression.

Main> :t 2 * 4
2 * 4 : Integer

Whenever we perform calculations with integer literals without being explicit about the types we want to use, Idris will use Integer as a default. Integer is an arbitrary precision signed integer type. It is one of the primitive types built into the language. Other primitives include fixed precision signed and unsigned integral types (Bits8, Bits16, Bits32 Bits64, Int8, Int16, Int32, and Int64), double precision (64 bit) floating point numbers (Double), unicode characters (Char) and strings of unicode characters (String). We will use many of these in due time.

A First Idris Program

We will often start up a REPL for tinkering with small parts of the Idris language, for reading some documentation, or for inspecting the content of an Idris module, but now we will write a minimal Idris program to get started with the language. Here comes the mandatory Hello World:

main : IO ()
main = putStrLn "Hello World!"

We will inspect the code above in some detail in a moment, but first we'd like to compile and run it. From this project's root directory, run the following:

pack -o hello exec src/Tutorial/Intro.md

This will create executable hello in directory build/exec, which can be invoked from the command-line like so (without the dollar prefix; this is used here to distinguish the terminal command from its output):

$ build/exec/hello
Hello World!

The pack program requires an .ipkg to be in scope (in the current directory or one of its parent directories) from which it will get other settings like the source directory to use (src in our case). The optional -o option gives the name of the executable to be generated. Pack comes up with a name of its own it this is missing. Type pack help for a list of available command-line options and commands, and pack help <cmd> for getting help for a specific command.

As an alternative, you can also load this source file in a REPL session and invoke function main from there:

pack repl src/Tutorial/Intro.md

Tutorial.Intro> :exec main
Hello World!

Go ahead and try both ways of building and running function main on your system!

The Shape of an Idris Definition

Now that we executed our first Idris program, we will talk a bit more about the code we had to write to define it.

A typical top level function in Idris consists of three things: The function's name (main in our case), its type (IO ()) plus its implementation (putStrLn "Hello World"). It is easier to explain these things with a couple of simple examples. Below, we define a top level constant for the largest unsigned eight bit integer:

maxBits8 : Bits8
maxBits8 = 255

The first line can be read as: "We'd like to declare (nullary) function maxBits8. It is of type Bits8". This is called the function declaration: We declare, that there shall be a function of the given name and type. The second line reads: "The result of invoking maxBits8 should be 255." (As you can see, we can use integer literals for other integral types than just Integer.) This is called the function definition: Function maxBits8 should behave as described here when being evaluated.

We can inspect this at the REPL. Load this source file into an Idris REPL (as described above), and run the following tests.

Tutorial.Intro> maxBits8
255
Tutorial.Intro> :t maxBits8
Tutorial.Intro.maxBits8 : Bits8

We can also use maxBits8 as part of another expression:

Tutorial.Intro> maxBits8 - 100
155

I called maxBits8 a nullary function, which is just a fancy word for constant. Let's write and test our first real function:

distanceToMax : Bits8 -> Bits8
distanceToMax n = maxBits8 - n

This introduces some new syntax and a new kind of type: Function types. distanceToMax : Bits8 -> Bits8 can be read as follows: "distanceToMax is a function of one argument of type Bits8, which returns a result of type Bits8". In the implementation, the argument is given a local identifier n, which is then used in the calculation on the right hand side. Again, go ahead and try this function at the REPL:

Tutorial.Intro> distanceToMax 12
243
Tutorial.Intro> :t distanceToMax
Tutorial.Intro.distanceToMax : Bits8 -> Bits8
Tutorial.Intro> :t distanceToMax 12
distanceToMax 12 : Bits8

As a final example, let's implement a function to calculate the square of an integer:

square : Integer -> Integer
square n = n * n

We now learn a very important aspect of programming in Idris: Idris is a statically typed programming language. We are not allowed to freely mix types as we please. Doing so will result in an error message from the type checker (which is part of the compilation process of Idris). For instance, if we try the following at the REPL, we will get a type error:

Tutorial.Intro> square maxBits8
Error: ...

The reason: square expects an argument of type Integer, but maxBits8 is of type Bits8. Many primitive types are interconvertible (sometimes with the risk of loss of precision) using function cast (more on the details later):

Tutorial.Intro> square (cast maxBits8)
65025

Note, that in the example above the result is much larger that maxBits8. The reason is, that maxBits8 is first converted to an Integer of the same value, which is then squared. If on the other hand we squared maxBits8 directly, the result would be truncated to still fit the valid range of Bits8:

Tutorial.Intro> maxBits8 * maxBits8
1

Where to get Help

There are several resources available online and in print, where you can find help and documentation about the Idris programming language. Here is a non-comprehensive list of them:

• Type-Driven Development with Idris

  The Idris book! This describes in great detail the core concepts for using Idris and dependent types to write robust and concise code. It uses Idris 1 in its examples, so parts of it have to be slightly adjusted when using Idris 2. There is also a list of required updates.

• A Crash Course in Idris 2

  The official Idris 2 tutorial. A comprehensive but dense explanation of all features of Idris 2. I find this to be useful as a reference, and as such it is highly accessible. However, it is not an introduction to functional programming or type-driven development in general.

• The Idris 2 GitHub Repository

  Look here for detailed installation instructions and some introductory material. There is also a wiki, where you can find a list of editor plugins, a list of community libraries, a list of external backends, and other useful information.

• The Idris 2 Discord Channel

  If you get stuck with a piece of code, want to ask about some obscure language feature, want to promote your new library, or want to just hang out with other Idris programmers, this is the place to go. The discord channel is pretty active and very friendly towards newcomers.

• The Idris REPL

  Finally, a lot of useful information can be provided by Idris itself. I tend to have at least one REPL session open all the time when programming in Idris. My editor (neovim) is set up to use the language server for Idris 2, which is incredibly useful. In the REPL,

  • use :t to inspect the type of an expression or meta variable (hole): :t foldl,
  • use :ti to inspect the type of a function including implicit arguments: :ti foldl,
  • use :m to list all meta variables (holes) in scope,
  • use :doc to access the documentation of a top level function (:doc the), a data type plus all its constructors and available hints (:doc Bool), a language feature (:doc case, :doc let, :doc interface, :doc record, or even :doc ?), or an interface (:doc Uninhabited),
  • use :module to import a module from one of the available packages: :module Data.Vect,
  • use :browse to list the names and types of all functions exported by a loaded module: :browse Data.Vect,
  • use :help to get a list of other commands plus a short description for each.

Summary

In this introduction we learned about the most basic features of the Idris programming language. We used the REPL to tinker with our ideas and inspect the types of things in our code, and we used the Idris compiler to compile an Idris source file to an executable.

We also learned about the basic shape of a top level definition in Idris, which always consists of an identifier (its name), a type, and an implementation.

What's next?

In the next chapter, we start programming in Idris for real. We learn how to write our own pure functions, how functions compose, and how we can treat functions just like other values and pass them around as arguments to other functions.