Strong Induction Principles in the Locally Nameless Representation of Binders (Preliminary Notes)

When using the locally nameless representation for binders, proofs by rule induction over an inductively defined relation traditionally involve a weak and strong version of this relation, and a proof that both versions derive the same judgements. In these notes we demonstrate with examples that it is often sufficient to define just the weak version, using the infrastructure provided by the nominal Isabelle package to automatically derive (in a uniform way) a strong induction principle for this weak version. The derived strong induction principle offers a similar convenience in induction proofs as the traditional approach using weak and strong versions of the definition. From our experience, we conjecture that our technique can be used in many rule and structural induction proofs.