in racket, i define the following function and am wondering whether it is tail recursive:
(define foo
(λ (c m s1 s2)
(if (< c m)
(if (= (modulo m c) 0)
(foo (+ c 1) m (+ s1 c) s2)
(foo (+ c 2) m s1 (+ s2 c)))
(cons s1 s2))))
my question is virtually like this, but i have to write something else to satisfy my post quality standards. actually, i do not know what is my post quality standards.
This is practically the same as your previous question. Yes, this is tail recursive: whenever a recursive call occurs in your function foo, it's in a tail position. Meaning: after the recursive call is performed, there's nothing else to do, that branch of execution ends. And the (cons s1 s2) part is the base case of the recursion, so it doesn't count. To see it more clearly, the foo procedure is equivalent to this:
(define (foo c m s1 s2)
(cond ((>= c m)
(cons s1 s2)) ; base case of recursion
((= (modulo m c) 0)
(foo (+ c 1) m (+ s1 c) s2)) ; recursive call is in tail position
(else
(foo (+ c 2) m s1 (+ s2 c))))) ; recursive call is in tail position
Let's see an example of when something is not a tail recursion. For instance, if the consequent part of the second if were defined like this:
(+ 1 (foo (+ c 1) m (+ s1 c) s2))
Then clearly the recursive call would not be in a tail position, because after the recursion returns an operation is performed: adding one to the result of the recursion.
Here's a pseudocode (Common Lisp actually) translation of your code to frame-mutating version:
(defun foo (c m s1 s2)
(prog
((c c) (m m) (s1 s1) (s2 s2)) ; the frame
BACK
(if (< c m)
(if (= (modulo m c) 0)
(progn
(psetf s1 (+ s1 c) ; set!
c (+ c 1)) ; in parallel
(go BACK))
(progn
(psetf s2 (+ s2 c) ; set!
c (+ c 2)) ; in parallel
(go BACK)))
(return-from foo (cons s1 s2))))))
Since there's nothing more left to do after each tail call, we can just (go BACK).
The only calls to foo are in the tail position, so that function looks tail recursive to me.
Section 11.20, page 59 of Scheme R6RS describes tail calls and shows the tail call position for the fundamental Scheme syntactic forms, like for if and lambda
Your calls to foo within foo are in tail position. (Because they are in the inner if tail position, the outer if tail position and the lambda tail position.)
Related
I'm trying to make a for loop that iterates over a list of numbers and prints out every 3rd number.
Edit: I've only figured out how to use the for loop but I'm not entirely sure if there's a specific function I can use to only show every 3rd number. I feel like I might be on the right path when using car/cdr function except I'm getting an error
rest: contract violation
expected: (and/c list? (not/c empty?))
given: 0
My code:
(for/list ([x (in-range 20)] #:when (car(cdr(cdr x)))) (displayln x))
I'm trying to make a for loop that iterates over a list of numbers and prints out every 3rd number.
Typically it is more useful to create a new list with the desired values, and then print those values, or pass them to a function, or do whatever else may be needed. for/list does indeed return a list, and this is one reason for problems encountered by OP example code. (Other problems in OP code include that x is a number with [x (in-range 20)], so (cdr x) is not defined).
A possible solution would be to recurse over the input list, using take to grab the next three values, keeping the third, and using drop to reduce the input list:
;; Recurse using `take` and `drop`:
(define (every-3rd-1 lst)
(if (< (length lst) 3)
'()
(cons (third (take lst 3))
(every-3rd-1 (drop lst 3)))))
Another option would be to recurse on the input list using an auxiliary counter; starting from 1, only keep the values from the input list when the counter is a multiple of 3:
;; Recurse using an auxilliary counter:
(define (every-3rd-2 lst)
(define (every-3rd-helper lst counter)
(cond [(null? lst)
'()]
[(zero? (remainder counter 3))
(cons (first lst) (every-3rd-helper (rest lst) (add1 counter)))]
[else (every-3rd-helper (rest lst) (add1 counter))]))
(every-3rd-helper lst 1))
Yet another possibility would be to use for/list to build a list; here i is bound to values from the input list, and counter is bound to values from a list of counting numbers:
;; Use `for/list` to build a list:
(define (every-3rd-3 lst)
(for/list ([i lst]
[counter (range 1 (add1 (length lst)))]
#:when (zero? (remainder counter 3)))
i))
This function (or any of them, for that matter) could be usefully generalized to keep every nth element:
;; Generalize to `every-nth`:
(define (every-nth n lst)
(for/list ([i lst]
[counter (range 1 (add1 (length lst)))]
#:when (zero? (remainder counter n)))
i))
Finally, map could be used to create a list containing every nth element by mapping over a range of every nth index into the list:
;; Use `map` and `range`:
(define (every-nth-map n lst)
(map (lambda (x) (list-ref lst x)) (range (sub1 n) (length lst) n)))
If what OP really requires is simply to print every third value, rather than to create a list of every third value, perhaps the code above can provide useful materials allowing OP to come to a satisfactory conclusion. But, each of these functions can be used to print results as OP desires, as well:
scratch.rkt> (for ([x (every-3rd-1 '(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p))])
(displayln x))
c
f
i
l
o
scratch.rkt> (for ([x (every-3rd-2 '(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p))])
(displayln x))
c
f
i
l
o
scratch.rkt> (for ([x (every-3rd-3 '(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p))])
(displayln x))
c
f
i
l
o
scratch.rkt> (for ([x (every-nth 3 '(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p))])
(displayln x))
c
f
i
l
o
scratch.rkt> (for ([x (every-nth-map 3 '(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p))])
(displayln x))
c
f
i
l
o
Here is a template:
(for ([x (in-list xs)]
[i (in-naturals]
#:when some-condition-involving-i)
(displayln x))
(defun foo (in i out)
(if (>= i 0)
(progn
(append (list (intern (string (elt in i)))) out)
(print output)
(foo in (- i 1) out )
)
(out)
)
)
(print (foo "abcd" (- (length "abcd") 1) (list)))
I am trying to return this string as (a b c d). But it does return nil as output. What do I do wrong here? Thanks
I don’t know what this has to do with appending. I think your desired output is also weird and you shouldn’t do what you’re doing. The right object for a character is a character not a symbol. Nevertheless, a good way to get the list (a b c d) is as follows:
CL-USER> '(a b c d)
Interning symbols at runtime is weird so maybe you would like this:
(defconstant +alphabet+ #(a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z))
(defun foo (seq)
(map 'list
(lambda (char)
(let ((index (- (char-code char) (char-code #\a))))
(if (< -1 index (length +alphabet+))
(svref +alphabet+ index)
(error "not in alphabet: ~c" char))))
seq))
You have just some minor mistakes. First, we need to get rid of output and (output); these bear no relation to the code. It seems you were working with a variable called output and then renamed it to out without fixing all the code. Moreover, (output) is a function call; it expects a function called output to exist.
Secondly, the result of append must be captured somehow; in the progn you're just discarding it. Here is a working version:
(defun foo (in i out)
(if (>= i 0)
(foo in (1- i) (cons (intern (string (elt in i))) out))
out))
Note also that instead of your (append (list X) Y), I'm using the more efficient and idiomatic (cons X Y). The result of this cons operation has to be passed to foo. The out argument is our accumulator that is threaded through the tail recursion; it holds how much of the list we have so far.
I.e. we can't have (progn <make-new-list> (foo ... <old-list>)); that just creates the new list and throws it away, and then just passes the old list to the recursive call. Since the old list initially comes as nil, we just keep passing along this nil and when the index hits zero, that's what pops out. We need (foo .... <make-new-list>), which is what I've done.
Tests:
[1]> (foo "" -1 nil)
NIL
[2]> (foo "a" 0 nil)
(|a|)
[3]> (foo "ab" 1 nil)
(|a| |b|)
[4]> (foo "abcd" 3 nil)
(|a| |b| |c| |d|)
[5]> (foo "abcd" 3 '(x y z))
(|a| |b| |c| |d| X Y Z)
Lastly, if you want the (|a| |b| |c| |d|) symbols to appear as (a b c d), you have to fiddle withreadtable-case.
Of course:
[6]> (foo "ABCD" 3 nil)
(A B C D)
can u pls help me guys, its a tutorial question given to us by our lecturer & we can't actually seem to crack it no matter how much we tried. plz help
; perform some type/error checking,
; then call function h to ....
(defun f (L N)
(cond
( (not (listp L) ) nil)
( (not (integerp N) ) nil)
( (< N 1) nil)
( (< (length L) N) nil)
(t (h L N '() ) )
)
)
(defun h (L N Acc)
(cond
( (eq N 1) (append Acc (cdr L) ) )
(t (h (cdr L) (- N 1) (append Acc (list (car L) ) ) ) )
)
)
For the function call (f '(1 2 3) 1) show the sequence of calls (if any) made to function h, and show the final value returned by function f.
For the function call (f '(1 2 3 4) 3) show the sequence of calls (if any) made to function h, and show the final value returned by function f.
If we observe that function f appears to carry out some basic type/error checking and then calls function h to do the "real" work, what is it that h actually accomplishes?
General remarks
You cannot assume EQ will work reliably with numbers, according to the specification. Since N is a number, you should use = instead.
The COND in H has only two possible outcomes; that may be rewritten with an IF.
Do not add spaces between parentheses, do not let parentheses alone on a line. Please follow the usual formatting of Lisp forms (see for example http://lisp-lang.org/style-guide).
The overuse of APPEND in H is making the code more complex than it should be.
Function F
(defun f (L N)
(cond
( (not (listp L) ) nil)
( (not (integerp N) ) nil)
( (< N 1) nil)
( (< (length L) N) nil)
(t (h L N '() ) )
)
)
Function F calls H only when the code reaches the clauses guarded by T, which happens only when all the previous test fails.
Let's invert all tests to simplify a little bit, and use WHEN.
The equivalent form is:
(defun f (list number)
(when (and (listp list)
(integerp number)
(<= 1 number (length list)))
(h list number)))
The third argument to h is omitted, because we do not need it.
Function H
(defun h (L N Acc)
(cond
( (eq N 1) (append Acc (cdr L) ) )
(t (h (cdr L) (- N 1) (append Acc (list (car L) ) ) ) )
)
)
The code is using APPEND at each step of recursion. The accumulator might have been added to make the function tail-recursive, or maybe just to obfuscate the intent. You could rewrite H without the auxiliary list to better understand what it does:
(defun h (list number)
(if (= number 1)
(cdr list)
(cons (car list)
(h (cdr list) (- number 1)))))
And some tests:
(f '(a b c d e f) 3)
=> (A B D E F)
(f '(a b c d e f) 2)
=> (A C D E F)
I'm trying to create a custom reverse of list in Lisp. I'm pretty new to Lisp programming, and still struggling with syntax. This is my code so far
(defun new-union(l1 l2)
(setq l (union l1 l2))
(let (res)
(loop for x in l
do(setq res (cons (car l) res))
do(setq l (cdr l)))))
Here I'm taking two lists, and forming union list l. Then for reversing the list l I'm accessing element wise to append it to a new list res. Then consequently using the cons, car and cdr to update the list.
However, I'm getting a weird output. Can someone please suggest where I'm going wrong?
I'm aware of an inbuilt function for the same called nreverse , but I wanted to experiment to see how the Lisp interprets the data in list.
On printing res at the end, for example
(new-union '(a b c) '(d e f))
the output for above call gives me
(L A A A A A A A X X)
I think I'm doing the looping wrong.
Problems
(summary of previous comments)
Bad indentation, spaces, and names; prefer this:
(defun new-union (l1 l2)
(setq list (union l1 l2))
(let (reversed)
(loop for x in list
do (setq res (cons (car list) reversed))
do (setq list (cdr list)))))
Usage of SETQ on undeclared, global variables, instead of a LET
Mutation of the structure being iterated (LIST)
Not using X inside the LOOP (why define it?)
The return value is always NIL
Refactoring
(defun new-union (l1 l2)
(let ((reverse))
(dolist (elt (union l1 l2) reverse)
(push elt reverse))))
Define a local reverse variable, bound to NIL by default (you could set it to '(), this is sometimes preferred).
Use DOLIST to iterate over a list and perform side-effects; the third argument is the return value; here you can put the reverse variable where we accumulate the reversed list.
For each element elt, push it in front of reverse; if you want to avoid push for learning purposes, use (setf reverse (cons elt reverse)).
Common Lisp is multi-paradigm and favors pragmatic solutions: sometimes a loop is more natural or more efficient, and there is no reason to force yourself to adopt a functional style.
Functional implementation
However, lists provide a natural inductive structure: recursive approaches may be more appropriate in some cases.
If you wanted to use a functional style to compute reverse, be aware that tail-call optimization, though commonly available, is not required by the language specification (it depends on your implementation capabilities and compiler options).
With default settings, SBCL eliminates calls in tail positions and would eliminate the risk of stack overflows with large inputs. But there are other possible ways to obtain bad algorithmic complexities (and wasteful code) if you are not careful.
The following is what I'd use to define the combination of union and reverse; in particular, I prefer to define a local function with labels to avoid calling new-union with a dummy nil parameter. Also, I iterate the list resulting from the union only once.
(defun new-union (l1 l2)
(labels ((rev (list acc)
(etypecase list
(null acc)
(cons (rev (rest list)
(cons (first list) acc))))))
(rev (union l1 l2) nil)))
Trace
0: (NEW-UNION (A B C) (D E F))
1: (UNION (A B C) (D E F))
1: UNION returned (C B A D E F)
1: (REV (C B A D E F) NIL)
2: (REV (B A D E F) (C))
3: (REV (A D E F) (B C))
4: (REV (D E F) (A B C))
5: (REV (E F) (D A B C))
6: (REV (F) (E D A B C))
7: (REV NIL (F E D A B C))
7: REV returned (F E D A B C)
6: REV returned (F E D A B C)
5: REV returned (F E D A B C)
4: REV returned (F E D A B C)
3: REV returned (F E D A B C)
2: REV returned (F E D A B C)
1: REV returned (F E D A B C)
0: NEW-UNION returned (F E D A B C)
Remark
It is quite surprising to reverse the result of union, when the union is supposed to operate on unordered sets: the order of elements in the result do not have to reflect the ordering of list-1 or list-2 in any way. Sets are unordered collections having no duplicates; if your input lists already represent sets, as hinted by the name of the function (new-union), then it makes no sense to remove duplicates or expect the order to be meaningful.
If, instead, the input lists represents sequences of values, then the order matters; feel free to use append or concatenate in combination with remove-duplicates, but note that the latter will remove elements in front of the list by default:
(remove-duplicates (concatenate 'list '(4 5 6) '(2 3 4)))
=> (5 6 2 3 4)
You may want to use :from-end t instead.
Ok...I think you want to take two lists, combine them together, remove duplicates, and then reverse them.
Your biggest problem is that you're using loops instead of recursion. LISP was born to do list processing using recursion. It's far more natural.
Below is a very simple example of how to do that:
(defvar l1 '(a b c)) ;first list
(defvar l2 '(d e f)) ;second list
(defun my-reverse (a b) ;a and b are lists
"combines a and b into lst, removes duplicates, and reverses using recursion"
(let ((lst (remove-duplicates (append a b))))
(if (> (length lst) 0)
(append (last lst) (my-reverse nil (butlast lst)))
nil)))
Sample Run compiled in SLIME using SBCL
; compilation finished in 0:00:00.010
CL-USER> l1 ;; verify l1 variable
(A B C)
CL-USER> l2 ;; verify l2 variable
(D E F)
CL-USER> (append l1 l2) ;; append l1 and l2
(A B C D E F)
CL-USER> (my-reverse l1 l2) ;; reverse l1 and l2
(F E D C B A)
(define (repeated f n)
if (= n 0)
f
((compose repeated f) (lambda (x) (- n 1))))
I wrote this function, but how would I express this more clearly, using simple recursion with repeated?
I'm sorry, I forgot to define my compose function.
(define (compose f g) (lambda (x) (f (g x))))
And the function takes as inputs a procedure that computes f and a positive integer n and returns the procedure that computes the nth repeated application of f.
I'm assuming that (repeated f 3) should return a function g(x)=f(f(f(x))). If that's not what you want, please clarify. Anyways, that definition of repeated can be written as follows:
(define (repeated f n)
(lambda (x)
(if (= n 0)
x
((repeated f (- n 1)) (f x)))))
(define (square x)
(* x x))
(define y (repeated square 3))
(y 2) ; returns 256, which is (square (square (square 2)))
(define (repeated f n)
(lambda (x)
(let recur ((x x) (n n))
(if (= n 0)
args
(recur (f x) (sub1 n))))))
Write the function the way you normally would, except that the arguments are passed in two stages. It might be even clearer to define repeated this way:
(define repeated (lambda (f n) (lambda (x)
(define (recur x n)
(if (= n 0)
x
(recur (f x) (sub1 n))))
(recur x n))))
You don't have to use a 'let-loop' this way, and the lambdas make it obvious that you expect your arguments in two stages.
(Note:recur is not built in to Scheme as it is in Clojure, I just like the name)
> (define foonly (repeat sub1 10))
> (foonly 11)
1
> (foonly 9)
-1
The cool functional feature you want here is currying, not composition. Here's the Haskell with implicit currying:
repeated _ 0 x = x
repeated f n x = repeated f (pred n) (f x)
I hope this isn't a homework problem.
What is your function trying to do, just out of curiosity? Is it to run f, n times? If so, you can do this.
(define (repeated f n)
(for-each (lambda (i) (f)) (iota n)))