Towards an induction principle for nested data types

Abstract: A well-known problem in the theory of dependent types is how to handle so-called nested data types. These data types are difficult to program and to reason about in total dependently typed languages such as Agda and Coq. In particular, it is not easy to derive a canonical induction principle for such types. Working towards a solution to this problem, we introduce dependently typed folds for nested data types. Using the nested data type Bush as a guiding example, we show how to derive its dependently typed fold and induction principle. We also discuss the relationship between dependently typed folds and the more traditional higher-order folds.