Church encoding is a means of embedding data and operators into the lambda calculus, the most familiar form being the church numerals, a representation of the natural numbers using lambda notation. The method is named for Alonzo Church, who first encoded data in the lambda calculus this way.

Terms that are usually considered primitive in other notations (such as integers, booleans, pairs, lists, and tagged unions) are mapped to higher-order functions under Church encoding; from the Church-Turing thesis we know that any computable operator (and its operands) can be represented under Church encoding.

Many students of mathematics are familiar with Gödel numbering members of a set; Church encoding is an equivalent operation defined on lambda abstractions instead of natural numbers.

Church numerals

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Church numerals are the representations of natural numbers under Church encoding. The higher-order function that represents natural number $n$ is a function that maps any other function $f$ to its n-fold composition $f^n\; =\; f\; \backslash circ\; f\; \backslash circ\; \backslash ldots\; \backslash circ\; f$.

Definition

Church numerals 0, 1, 2, ..., are defined as follows in the lambda calculus:

0 ≡ λf.λx. x

1 ≡ λf.λx. f x

2 ≡ λf.λx. f (f x)

3 ≡ λf.λx. f (f (f x))

...

n ≡ λf.λx. fn x

...

That is, the natural number $n$ is represented by the Church numeral n, which has property that for any lambda-terms F and X,

n F X =_β Fn X

Computation with Church numerals

In the lambda calculus, numeric functions are representable by corresponding functions on Church numerals. These functions can be implemented in most functional programming languages (subject to type constraints) by direct translation of lambda terms.

The addition function $plus(m,n)=m+n$ uses the identity $f^\{(m+n)\}(x)=f^m(f^n(x))$.

plus ≡ λm.λn.λf.λx. m f (n f x)

The successor function $succ(n)=n+1$ is β-equivalent to (plus 1).

succ ≡ λn.λf.λx. f (n f x)

The multiplication function $times(m,n)=m*n$ uses the identity $f^\{(m*n)\}\; =\; (f^m)^n$.

mult ≡ λm.λn.λf. n (m f)

The exponentiation function $exp(m,n)=m^n$ is straightforward given our definition of church numerals.

exp ≡ λm.λn. n m

The predecessor function works by generating an $n$-fold composition of functions that each apply their argument g to f; the base case discards its copy of f and returns x.

pred ≡ λn.λf.λx. n (λg.λh. h (g f)) (λu. x) (λu. u)

Translation with other representations

Most real-world languages have support for machine-native integers; the church and unchurch functions (given here in Haskell) convert between nonnegative integers and their corresponding church numerals. Implementations of these conversions in other languages are similar.

type Church a = (a -> a) -> a -> a

church :: Integer -> Church a

church 0 = \f -> \x -> x

church n = \f -> \x -> f (church (n-1) f x)

unchurch :: Church Integer -> Integer

unchurch n = n (\x -> x + 1) 0

Church booleans

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Church booleans are the Church encoding of the boolean values true and false. Some programming languages use these as implementation model for boolean arithmetic; examples are Smalltalk and Pico. The boolean values are represented as functions of two values that evaluate to one or the other of their arguments.

Formal definition in lambda calculus:

true ≡ λa.λb. a

false ≡ λa.λb. b

Functions of boolean arithmetic can be derived for Church booleans:

and ≡ λm.λn.λa.λb. m (n a b) b

or ≡ λm.λn.λa.λb. m a (n a b)

not ≡ λm.λa.λb. m b a

See also

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• Lambda calculus
• System F for Church numerals in a typed calculus

External links

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• Some interactive examples of Church numerals

Lambda calculus | Booleano di Church | 邱奇数