Unembedding Domain-Specific Languages

Higher-order abstract syntax provides a convenient way of embedding domain-specific languages, but is awkward to analyse and manipulate directly. We explore the boundaries of higher-order abstract syntax. Our key tool is the unembedding of embedded terms as de Bruijn terms, enabling intensional analysis. As part of our solution we present techniques for separating the definition of an embedded program from its interpretation, giving modular extensions of the embedded language, and different ways to encode the types of the embedded language.