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We introduce the notion of nonuniform coercion, which is the promotion of a value of one type to an enriched value of a different type via a nonuniform procedure. Nonuniform coercions are a generalization of the (uniform) coercions known in the literature and they arise naturally when formalizing mathematics in an higher order interactive theorem prover using convenient devices like canonical structures, type classes or unification hints. We also show how nonuniform coercions can be naturally implemented at the user level in an interactive theorem prover that allows unification hints.

It is well known that general recursion cannot be expressed within Martin-Loef's type theory and various approaches have been proposed to overcome this problem still maintaining the termination of the computation of the typable terms. In this work we propose a new approach to this problem based on the use of inductively generated formal topologies.