How do I prove that two Fibonacci implementations are equal in Coq?

Question

I\'ve two Fibonacci implementations, seen below, that I want to prove are functionally equivalent.

I\'ve already proved properties about natural numbers, but this ex

Answer 1

Anton's proof is very beautiful, and better than mine, but it might be useful, anyway.

Instead of coming up with the generalisation lemma, I strengthened the induction hypothesis.

Say the original goal is Q n. I then changed the goal with

cut (Q n /\ Q (S n))

from

 Q n

to

 Q n /\ Q (S n)

This new goal trivially implies the original goal, but with it the induction hypothesis becomes stronger, so it becomes possible to rewrite more.

IHn : Q n /\ Q (S n)
=========================
Q (S n) /\ Q (S (S n))

This idea is explained in Software Foundations in the chapter where one does proofs over even numbers.

Because the propostion often is very long, I made an Ltac tactic that names the long and messy term.

Ltac nameit Q :=
  match goal with [ _:_ |- ?P ?n] => let X := fresh Q in remember P as X end.

Require Import Ring Arith.

(Btw, I renamed vistit_fib_v2 to fib_v2.) I needed a lemma about one step of fib_v2.

Lemma fib_v2_lemma: forall n a b, fib_v2 (S (S n)) a b = fib_v2 (S n) a b + fib_v2 n a b.
  intro n.
  pattern n.
  nameit Q.
  cut (Q n /\ Q (S n)).
  tauto.                             (* Q n /\ Q (S n) -> Q n *)

  induction n.
  split; subst; simpl; intros; ring. (* Q 0 /\ Q 1  *)
  split; try tauto.                  (* Q (S n)     *)

  subst Q.                           (* Q (S (S n)) *)
  destruct IHn as [H1 H2].
  assert (L1: forall n a b, fib_v2 (S n) a b = fib_v2 n b (a+b)) by reflexivity.
  congruence.
Qed.

The congruence tactic handles goals that follow from a bunch of A = B assumptions and rewriting.

Proving the theorem is very similar.

Theorem fib_v1_fib_v2 : forall n, fib_v1 n = fib_v2 n 0 1.
  intro n.
  pattern n.
  nameit Q.
  cut (Q n /\ Q (S n)).
  tauto.                             (* Q n /\ Q (S n) -> Q n *)

  induction n.
  split; subst; simpl; intros; ring. (* Q 0 /\ Q 1  *)
  split; try tauto.                  (* Q (S n)     *)

  subst Q.                           (* Q (S (S n)) *)
  destruct IHn as [H1 H2].
  assert (fib_v1 (S (S n)) = fib_v1 (S n) + fib_v1 n) by reflexivity.
  assert (fib_v2 (S (S n)) 0 1 = fib_v2 (S n) 0 1 + fib_v2 n 0 1) by
      (pose fib_v2_lemma; congruence).
  congruence.
Qed.  

All the boiler plate code could be put in a tactic, but I didn't want to go crazy with the Ltac, since that was not what the question was about.

Answer 2

There is a very powerful library -- math-comp written in the Ssreflect formal proof language that is in its turn based on Coq. In this answer I present a version that uses its facilities. It's just a simplified piece of this development. All credit goes to the original author.

Let's do some imports and the definitions of our two functions, math-comp (ssreflect) style:

From mathcomp
Require Import ssreflect ssrnat ssrfun eqtype ssrbool.

Fixpoint fib_rec (n : nat) {struct n} : nat :=
  if n is n1.+1 then
    if n1 is n2.+1 then fib_rec n1 + fib_rec n2
    else 1
  else 0.

Fixpoint fib_iter (a b n : nat) {struct n} : nat :=
  if n is n1.+1 then
    if n1 is n2.+1
      then fib_iter b (b + a) n1
      else b
    else a.

A helper lemma expressing the basic property of Fibonacci numbers:

Lemma fib_iter_property : forall n a b,
  fib_iter a b n.+2 = fib_iter a b n.+1 + fib_iter a b n.
Proof.
case=>//; elim => [//|n IHn] a b; apply: IHn.
Qed.

Now, let's tackle equivalence of the two implementations. The main idea here, that distinguish the following proof from the other proofs has been presented as of time of this writing, is that we perform kind of complete induction, using elim: n {-2}n (leqnn n). This gives us the following (strong) induction hypothesis:

IHn : forall n0 : nat, n0 <= n -> fib_rec n0 = fib_iter 0 1 n0

Here is the main lemma and its proof:

Lemma fib_rec_eq_fib_iter : fib_rec =1 fib_iter 0 1.
Proof.
move=>n; elim: n {-2}n (leqnn n)=> [n|n IHn].
  by rewrite leqn0; move/eqP=>->.
case=>//; case=>// n0; rewrite ltnS=> ltn0n.
rewrite fib_iter_property.
by rewrite <- (IHn _ ltn0n), <- (IHn _ (ltnW ltn0n)).
Qed.

Answer 3

A note of warning: in what follows I'll to try to show the main idea of such a proof, so I'm not going to stick to some subset of Coq and I won't do arithmetic manually. Instead I'll use some proof automation, viz. the ring tactic. However, feel free to ask additional questions, so you could convert the proof to somewhat that would suit your purposes.

I think it's easier to start with some generalization:

Require Import Arith.    (* for `ring` tactic *)

Lemma fib_v1_eq_fib2_generalized n : forall a0 a1,
  visit_fib_v2 (S n) a0 a1 = a0 * fib_v1 n + a1 * fib_v1 (S n).
Proof.
  induction n; intros a0 a1.
  - simpl; ring.
  - change (visit_fib_v2 (S (S n)) a0 a1) with
           (visit_fib_v2 (S n) a1 (a0 + a1)).
    rewrite IHn. simpl; ring.
Qed.

If using ring doesn't suit your needs, you can perform multiple rewrite steps using the lemmas of the Arith module.

Now, let's get to our goal:

Definition fib_v2 n := visit_fib_v2 n 0 1.

Lemma fib_v1_eq_fib2 n :
  fib_v1 n = fib_v2 n.
Proof.
  destruct n.
  - reflexivity.
  - unfold fib_v2. rewrite fib_v1_eq_fib2_generalized.
    ring.
Qed.

Answer 4

@larsr's answer inspired this alternative answer.

First of all, let's define fib_v2:

Require Import Coq.Arith.Arith. 

Definition fib_v2 n := visit_fib_v2 n 0 1.

Then, we are going to need a lemma, which is the same as fib_v2_lemma in @larsr's answer. I'm including it here for consistency and to show an alternative proof.

Lemma visit_fib_v2_main_property n: forall a0 a1,
  visit_fib_v2 (S (S n)) a0 a1 =
  visit_fib_v2 (S n) a0 a1 + visit_fib_v2 n a0 a1.
Proof.
  induction n; intros a0 a1; auto with arith.
  change (visit_fib_v2 (S (S (S n))) a0 a1) with
         (visit_fib_v2 (S (S n)) a1 (a0 + a1)).
  apply IHn.
Qed.

As suggested in the comments by larsr, the visit_fib_v2_main_property lemma can be also proved by the following impressive one-liner:

now induction n; firstorder.

Because of the nature of the numbers in the Fibonacci series it's very convenient to define an alternative induction principle:

Lemma pair_induction (P : nat -> Prop) :
  P 0 ->
  P 1 ->
  (forall n, P n -> P (S n) -> P (S (S n))) ->
  forall n, P n.
Proof.
  intros H0 H1 Hstep n.
  enough (P n /\ P (S n)) by tauto.
  induction n; intuition.
Qed.

The pair_induction principle basically says that if we can prove some property P for 0 and 1 and if for every natural number k > 1, we can prove P k holds under the assumption that P (k - 1) and P (k - 2) hold, then we can prove forall n, P n.

Using our custom induction principle, we get the proof as follows:

Lemma fib_v1_eq_fib2 n :
  fib_v1 n = fib_v2 n.
Proof.
  induction n using pair_induction.
  - reflexivity.
  - reflexivity.
  - unfold fib_v2.
    rewrite visit_fib_v2_main_property.
    simpl; auto.
Qed.

Answer 5

This proof script only shows the proof structure. It could be useful to explain the idea of the proof.

Require Import Ring Arith Psatz.  (* Psatz required by firstorder *)

Theorem fibfib: forall n, fib_v2 n 0 1 = fib_v1 n.
Proof with (intros; simpl in *; ring || firstorder).
  assert (H: forall n a0 a1, fib_v2 (S n) a0 a1 = a0 * (fib_v1 n) + a1 * (fib_v1 (S n))).
  { induction n... rewrite IHn; destruct n... }
  destruct n; try rewrite H...
Qed.

Answer 6

Here is yet another answer, similar to the one using mathcomp, but this one uses "vanilla" Coq.

First of all, we need some imports, additional definitions, and a couple of helper lemmas:

Require Import Coq.Arith.Arith.

Definition fib_v2 n := visit_fib_v2 n 0 1.

Lemma visit_fib_v2_property n: forall a0 a1,
  visit_fib_v2 (S (S n)) a0 a1 =
  visit_fib_v2 (S n) a0 a1 + visit_fib_v2 n a0 a1.
Proof. now induction n; firstorder. Qed.

Lemma fib_v2_property n:
  fib_v2 (S (S n)) = fib_v2 (S n) + fib_v2 n.
Proof. apply visit_fib_v2_property. Qed.

To prove the main lemma we are going to use the standard well-founded induction lt_wf_ind principle for natural numbers with the < relation (a.k.a. complete induction):

This time we need to prove only one subgoal, since the n = 0 case for complete induction is always vacuously true. Our induction hypothesis, unsurprisingly, looks like this:

IH : forall m : nat, m < n -> fib_v1 m = fib_v2 m

Here is the proof:

Lemma fib_v1_eq_fib2 n :
  fib_v1 n = fib_v2 n.
Proof.
  pattern n; apply lt_wf_ind; clear n; intros n IH.
  do 2 (destruct n; trivial).
  rewrite fib_v2_property.
  rewrite <- !IH; auto.
Qed.