prove

Tactical.prove : term * tactic -> thm

Attempts to prove a boolean term using the supplied tactic.

When applied to a term-tactic pair (tm,tac), the function prove attempts to prove the goal ?- tm, that is, the term tm with no assumptions, using the tactic tac. If prove succeeds, it returns the corresponding theorem A |- tm, where the assumption list A may not be empty if the tactic is invalid; prove has no inbuilt validity-checking.

By default this function calls TAC_PROOF (q.v.) with a wrapper that augments that underlying function’s error-reporting, but this call is made via a user-updatable reference. This means there are contexts in which this function may, for example, automatically assert all terms it is passed as theorems using mk_thm.

Comments

To emulate interactive use and its variations, prove is appropriate; to get fixed behaviour, use TAC_PROOF.

Failure

Fails if the term is not of type bool (and so cannot possibly be the conclusion of a theorem), or if the tactic does not solve the goal.

See also

Tactical.prove_goal, Tactical.set_prover, Tactical.TAC_PROOF.