Iter 14d: remove Term::If as a redundancy

Term::If was semantically a subset of Term::Match on Bool. Per
CLAUDE.md the language must contain no redundancies; two AST nodes
for the same operation produces an authoring decision with no
semantic content and a duplicate codegen path. Removed.

Migration shape (applied to sum, sort, max3 fixtures):
  (if c a b) -> (match c (case (lit-bool true) a) (case _ b))

No schema version bump (per user direction): no third-party consumes
ailang/v0, so version ceremony is pure overhead. Edited AST and
fixtures in place; pinned hashes in hash.rs updated.

Implementer deviation, called out and justified: a tightly-scoped
lower_bool_match helper (~95 LOC) was needed in codegen because
the existing match path rejects i1 scrutinees and Pattern::Lit.
Helper accepts only the canonical two-arm migration shape, errors
on anything else, emits the same br/phi IR Term::If used to. No
generalisation of the ADT-match codegen.

Diff: 13 files, +286/-221 (net +65 LOC). AST got smaller
(one variant gone), form-(A) got smaller (one production gone),
typecheck got smaller (one branch gone). Codegen got slightly
larger by the bool-match helper.

Hash deltas: sum.sum, sort.insert, max3.max, max3.max3 changed.
All other defs (e.g. sum.main, sort.IntList, sort.sort,
sort.print_list, max3.main) kept bit-identical hashes — confirms
canonical-JSON byte format intact.

Verification: 76/76 tests green; sum->55, max3->17, sort->[1,1,2,
3,3,4,5,5,5,6,9] (identical to pre-migration). cargo doc 0 warnings.

Tail-call survey by implementer (informs 14e): print_list
recursions are already in tail position (rhs of seq inside match
arm); map/sort/insert recursions are NOT (constructor-blocked
inside Cons applications). 14e annotation will benefit terminal
recursions; ctor-blocked ones need accumulator-form rewrites in
source, not a compiler-side transform.

Decision 7 added to DESIGN.md. JOURNAL entry has the language-
completion sequence (14d done, 14e tail-calls, 14f GC, 15a stdlib).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-05-07 16:56:02 +02:00
parent 706f90bacd
commit 8d97a924de
14 changed files with 419 additions and 223 deletions
+28 -2
View File
@@ -429,6 +429,31 @@ fixtures round-trip identically through `print → parse → canonical
JSON`; the three hand-written `.ailx` exhibits parse to canonical
JSON identical to their corresponding `.ail.json` files.
## Decision 7: redundancy removal — `Term::If` is not a primitive
`Term::If { cond, then, else_ }` is semantically a subset of
`Term::Match` on `Bool`. Per CLAUDE.md the language must contain no
redundancies; two AST nodes for the same operation produces an
authoring decision with no semantic content and an extra codegen
path. Iter 14d removes `Term::If`. Migration shape on the JSON side:
{"t":"if","cond":C,"then":A,"else":B}
{"t":"match","scrutinee":C,
"arms":[
{"pat":{"p":"lit","lit":{"kind":"bool","value":true}},"body":A},
{"pat":{"p":"wild"},"body":B}]}
The wildcard arm satisfies the typechecker's
`primitive-needs-wildcard` rule. A future iter may upgrade the
exhaustiveness check to recognise the `true`+`false` arm pair as
covering Bool without a wildcard; until then, wildcard is the
canonical migration target.
No schema version bump (no third-party consumes `ailang/v0`).
Hash invalidation for the three migrated fixtures (`sum`, `sort`,
`max3`) is intentional; the new hashes become the new identity.
## Mangling scheme (Iter 5c)
All AILang functions are mangled to `@ail_<module>_<def>` — even in the
@@ -492,7 +517,6 @@ hashes stay bit-identical.
{ "t": "var", "name": "<id>" }
{ "t": "app", "fn": Term, "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "let", "name": "<id>", "value": Term, "body": Term }
{ "t": "if", "cond": Term, "then": Term, "else": Term }
{ "t": "do", "op": "<eff>/<op>", "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "ctor", "type": "<id>", "ctor": "<id>", "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "match", "scrutinee": Term, "arms": [Arm...] }
@@ -588,7 +612,9 @@ as iterations land; the JOURNAL records the exact iteration.
What **is** supported (and used as the smoke test for the pipeline):
- Int, Bool, Unit, **Str** as primitive types.
- `if`, `let`, function calls, recursion.
- `let`, function calls, recursion. Bool branching is expressed via
`match` on `Bool` with a `(lit-bool true)` arm and a wildcard
fallback (Decision 7); there is no separate `if` AST node.
- Effects on function signatures, with `do op(args)` for direct effect
ops (`io/print_int`, `io/print_bool`, `io/print_str`).
- **ADTs + flat pattern matching** (Iter 3). Sub-patterns of a Ctor