docs: Fix misleading axiom justification — only IR eval is partial#198
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…ssue #160) AXIOMS.md, StatementEquivalence.lean, CONTRIBUTING.md, and YulGeneration/README.md all claimed that "both evalIRExpr and evalYulExpr are partial functions." In fact, only evalIRExpr is partial — evalYulExpr uses structural recursion and is total. This matters because: - The elimination strategy is simpler than documented: only the IR evaluator needs refactoring (~300 LOC, not ~500+) - The Yul side already demonstrates the fuel-based pattern to follow - The trust surface is smaller than previously stated Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
evalIRExprispartial, butevalYulExpris total (structural recursion). The previous claim that "both are partial" was wrong.Why this matters
The misleading documentation overstated the difficulty of eliminating these axioms. Since only the IR evaluator needs refactoring (the Yul side is already total), the elimination effort is ~300 LOC instead of the previously estimated ~500+. This is important for anyone planning trust-reduction work on the codebase.
Addresses issue #160.
Test plan
grep -n "partial def evalYulExpr" Compiler/should return nothing (confirming evalYulExpr is total)🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Note
Low Risk
Docs-only changes that don’t affect proof logic or runtime behavior; risk is limited to potential inaccuracies in the updated explanations.
Overview
Updates axiom documentation (in
AXIOMS.md,Compiler/Proofs/YulGeneration/StatementEquivalence.lean,Compiler/Proofs/YulGeneration/README.md, andCONTRIBUTING.md) to fix a factual error: onlyevalIRExpr/evalIRExprsarepartial/opaque to Lean, whileevalYulExpr/evalYulExprsare total via well-founded recursion.Reframes the soundness and axiom-elimination guidance accordingly, stating that removing the axioms would require refactoring only the IR evaluator (and related helpers like
evalIRCall) and revising the estimated effort from ~500 LOC to ~300 LOC.Written by Cursor Bugbot for commit 4e5c6e7. This will update automatically on new commits. Configure here.