I am stuck on a goal.
Assume we have the following definition:
Fixpoint iota (n : nat) : list nat :=
match n with
| 0 => []
| S k => iota k ++ [k]
end.
And we want to prove:
Theorem t1 : forall n, In n (iota n) -> False.
So far, I have managed to the following:
Theorem t1 : forall n, In n (iota n) -> False.
Proof.
intros.
induction n.
- cbn in H. contradiction.
- cbn in H. apply app_split in H.
Focus 2. unfold not. intros.
unfold In in H0. destruct H0. assert (~(n = S n)) by now apply s_inj.
contradiction.
apply H0.
apply IHn.
I used these two lemmas, proofs omitted:
Axiom app_split : forall A x (l l2 : list A), In x (l ++ l2) -> not (In x l2) -> In x l.
Axiom s_inj : forall n, ~(n = S n).
However, I am completely stuck, I need to somehow show that: In n (iota n) assuming In (S n) (iota n).
As you've observed the fact that the n in In n and the one in iota n are in lockstep in your statement makes the induction hypothesis hard to invoke (if not completely useless).
The trick here is to prove a more general statement than the one you are actually interested in which breaks this dependency between the two ns. I would suggest:
Theorem t : forall n k, n <= k -> In k (iota n) -> False.
from which you can derive t1 as a corollary:
Corollary t1 : forall n, In n (iota n) -> False.
intro n; apply (t n n); reflexivity.
Qed.
If you want to peek at the proof of t, you can have a look at this self-contained gist