Questions about replacing while and if statements with lisp - lisp

Question

I want to change the code below to Lisp code, but I keep getting errors in grammar. How do I fix the if statement?
int promising(int i)
{
int k = 1;
while (k < i)
{
if (col[i] == col[k] || abs(col[i] - col[k]) == abs(i - k))
return 0;
k++;
}
return 1;
}
Below is the one I changed to the Lisp code.
(setq col (list 0 0 0 0))
(DEFUN promising (i)
(let ((k 1)) ; k =1
(loop while (< k i)
do((if (or ( = (nth i col) (nth k col))
(= ( abs((setq a (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))))
( abs((setq b (- i k ))))))
(return-from promising 0)))
do (setq k (1+ k)))
(return-from promising 1))
)
It is difficult for me to flexibly change the complicated condition of the if statement to the lisp code.

Answer 1

You are doing "C-in-Lisp". Trying to directly translate C (or for that matter, C++/Java/C#/Python ...) programs into Lisp will often lead to poor code, and you should be better off trying to understand how those problems are sovled in Lisp.
That being said:
You should not use (setq col <whatever>) at the toplevel. Global variables are introduced using defvar or defparameter and their name is of the form *variable-name* to distinguish them from other variables. This is because they have different scoping rules, and behave differently (i.e. they are not equivalent to other languages' global variables). In particular, using setq with a variable that has not been declared with defvar or defparameter is undefined behaviour, and most implementations will allow it, but they will then create this global variable. You generally don't want that. To sum up: either use (defvar *col* (list 0 0 ...)) if you need this really is a global variable, or simply use (let ((col (list 0 ...))) <more-code>) where you need it.
loop is a complicated construct. This is, in itself, another mini-language that you have to learn on top of Lisp. In particular, if all you ever want to do is "loop with some variable between some bounds and increment it by some value at each step", use
(loop for k from 1 do ...) ;; this introduces a local variable k, incremented by 1 at each step, with no upper bound
(loop for k from 1 to 10 do ...) ;; same, but only loop until k reaches 10
(loop for k from 1 to 10 by 3 do ...) same, but increments k by 3 at each step
Other constructs are available. Read this section of Practical Common Lisp for a good introduction, and the relevant CLHS section for a technical description and documentation.
Please follow conventions for whitespace this makes it much easier to read. For example, never place a parenthesis alone on its line (e.g. your very last parenthesis), and ( abs((setq b (- i k )))) should really be written (abs ((setq b (- i k)))) (ignoring the fact that this is incorrect, see below ...). As far as style is concerned, you also need to fix the indentation, and don't write DEFUN is uppercase, it is unnecessary and looks weird.
You cannot place extra parenthensis just to group things together, parenthesis have semantic meaning. In particular, in most cases, calling a function or using pretty much any special operator is done by (<operator-name> <first-arg> <second-arg> ... ). You almost never have 2 consecutive opening parenthesis.
Why are you using (setq a ...) and (setq b ...) in your loop ? Neither a nor b is ever declared or used anywhere else.
If you want to access specific elements of a list, don't use a list, use a vector. In particular, several calls to the nth function is often the sign that you really should have been using a vector.
A correct version of your code, using a few loop facilities, and still assuming that col is a list (which is should not be) although there would be other loop constructs making this even clearer ...
(defun promising (i)
(loop for k from 1 below i
for col-k = (nth k col)
do (when (or (= (nth i col) (nth k col))
(= (abs (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))
(abs (- i k))))
(return-from promising 0)))
1)
Note that this code is incredibly inefficient and this is why I suggested not to translate directly from C to Lisp. In particular, although you traverse a list (you access the k-th element at the k-th step), your code calls nth at each step instead of traversing the list ! You also compute (nth i col) at each step, which is already useless in C (it is constant so doesn't need to be recomputed at every step), but is catastrophic here. This should really be:
(defun promising (i)
(let ((col-i (nth i col)))
(loop for k from 1 below i
for col-k in (cdr col) ;; you start from the index 1, not 0
do (when (or (= col-i col-k)
(= (abs (- col-i col-k))
(abs (- i k))))
(return-from promising 0))))
1)

Answer 2

There are several mistakes in the code.
Incorrect function calls
(DEFUN promising (i)
(let ((k 1)) ; k =1
(loop while (< k i)
do((if (or ( = (nth i col) (nth k col))
;; ^^
;; Incorrect
)
And also here:
(setq col (list 0 0 0 0))
(DEFUN promising (i)
(let ((k 1)) ; k =1
(loop while (< k i)
do((if (or ( = (nth i col) (nth k col))
(= ( abs((setq a (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))))
;; ^^
;; Incorrect
( abs((setq b (- i k ))))))
;; ^^
;; Incorrect
(return-from promising 0)))
do (setq k (1+ k)))
(return-from promising 1))
)
The loop macro have 2 do keywords
(setq col (list 0 0 0 0))
(DEFUN promising (i)
(let ((k 1)) ; k =1
(loop while (< k i)
do((if (or ( = (nth i col) (nth k col))
;; ^^
;; First do
(= ( abs((setq a (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))))
( abs((setq b (- i k ))))))
(return-from promising 0)))
do (setq k (1+ k)))
;; ^^
;; Second do
(return-from promising 1))
)
return-from is used several times
return-from is usually not present in Common Lisp code, this is pretty much like C goto, something developers try to avoid.
Incoherent setq defining a and b (probably old code)
(setq col (list 0 0 0 0))
(DEFUN promising (i)
(let ((k 1)) ; k =1
(loop while (< k i)
do((if (or ( = (nth i col) (nth k col))
(= ( abs((setq a (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))))\
;; ^^^^^^
;; ??
( abs((setq b (- i k ))))))
;; ^^^^^^
;; ??
Weird incrementation scheme
(setq k (1+ k))
While being correct, Common Lisp programmers will simply use the increment function:
(incf k)
Final code
The code you might looking for should be close to that one:
(defun promising (i)
(let ((k 1))
(loop while (< k i) do
(if (or (= (nth i col) (nth k col))
(= (abs (- (nth i col) (nth k col)))
(abs (- i k ))))
(return-from promising 0))
(incf k))
;; return value
k))
Please note that the code is not equivalent to the C version, because the data structure is completely different. In the C version, the access to the data will be very fast O(1). The Common Lisp version will be slow if you have a large number of elements O(n). You can be fast with Common Lisp if you replace your list by an array/vector.