Consider following lemma which should be easily provable:
lemma
fixes n m::nat
defines "m ≡ n - 1"
shows "m ≤ n"
proof(induction n)
case 0
then show ?case unfolding m_def
(* Why does «n» appear here? *)
next
case (Suc n)
then show ?case sorry
qed
However after unfolding m, the goal becomes n - 1 ≤ 0 instead of 0 - 1 ≤ 0 rendering the goal unprovable since n = 2 is a counterexample.
Is this a bug in Isabelle? How can I unfold the definition correctly?
As Javier pointed out, the n defined in the lemma head is different from the n created by induction. In other words, any facts from "outside" that reference n are not directly usable within the proof (induction n) environment.
However, Isabelle does offer a way to "inject" such facts, by piping them into induction:
lemma
fixes n m::nat
defines "m ≡ n - 1"
shows "m ≤ n"
using m_def (* this allows induction to use this fact *)
proof(induction n)
case 0
then show ?case by simp
next
case (Suc n)
then show ?case by simp
qed
using assms will work just as well in this case.
Note that direcly referring to m_def is no longer necessary, since a version of it is included for each case (in 0.hyps and Suc.hyps; use print_cases inside the proof for more information).