README.md

Collections with the type-level control of emptiness

Types

Lists

Those lists are called Lst and have a boolean argument as the first type argument. Being True, this argument says that the list cannot be empty (such lists also are aliased as Lst1). Being False, this argument says that the list can be empty, but does not have to.

Having that, such lists have nice list syntax and universal pattern matching both in non-empty and regular case (unlike standard List1 type):

ne123 : Lst1 Nat
ne123 = [1, 2, 3]

head : Lst1 a -> a
head (x::xs) = x

me123 : Lst False Nat
me123 = [1, 2, 3]

head' : Lst False a -> Maybe a
head' []      = Nothing
head' (x::xs) = Just x

Actually, list literal it polymorphic, thus this also works

me123' : Lst ne Nat
me123' = [1, 2, 3]

When you use polymorphic value in a polymorphic context, non-emptiness value defaults to True due to some compiler trick:

head'' : Lst ne a -> Maybe a
head'' []      = Nothing
head'' (x::xs) = Just x

x : Maybe Nat
x = head'' [1, 2, 3, 4]