Recursive function in Lisp - lisp

I have to build a function which determines if I have a conjunction of well-formed formulas built in this way :
cong ::= '(' and wff wff ...')'
Let's suppose I have the code which determines if a formula is wff. The function must first check if the first element of the list is 'and and then check recursively the rest of the sublists if they are wff. Note that p is also a wff so it doesn't neccessarily have to be a sublist.
Example : (and (or a b v) (and a b d) m n)
Here's what I tried which doesn't work for me :
(defun cong (fbf)
(and (eq (first fbf) 'and )
(reduce (lambda (x y) (and x y))
(mapcar #'wff (rest fbf)))))

Assuming a working wff predicate, your code will work. For example, using numberp as the predicate:
(defun cong (fbf)
(and (eq (first fbf) 'and)
(reduce (lambda (x y) (and x y))
(mapcar #'numberp (rest fbf)))))
Works fine:
CL-USER> (cong '(and 1 2 3 4 5))
T
CL-USER> (cong '(and 1 2 3 4 foo))
NIL
CL-USER> (cong '(1 2 3 4))
NIL
Note, that this can be done more easily:
(defun cong (fbf)
(and (eq (first fbf) 'and)
(every #'wff (cdr fbf))))
Also, note that in CL, by convention, predicates usually should end in p.
So, your, given your comment above, your problem is the wff predicate, which doesn't seem to work for atoms. Since you mentioned that p satisfies wff, that predicate is plain wrong, but if you have to use it (assuming this is some kind of homework), just check if the element at hand is a cons:
(defun cong (fbf)
(and (eq (first fbf) 'and)
(every #'wff (remove-if-not #'consp (cdr fbf)))))
This assumes that every atom satisfies wff. Thus, they won't change the outcome of a conjunction and can be dropped. Otherwise, you'd have to write another predicate to check for atoms satisfying wff or, which would be the right thing to do, fix wff in the first place.
Also, note that none of this really involves recursion, since you're only asking how to apply a predicate to a list and take the conjunction of the results.

Related

Insertion Sort in Common lisp

I want to implement the sorting function in common-lisp with this INSERT function
k means cons cell with number & val, and li means list where I want insert k into.
with this function, I can make a list of cell
(defun INSERT (li k) (IF (eq li nil) (cons (cons(car k)(cdr k)) nil)
(IF (eq (cdr li) nil)
(IF (< (car k)(caar li)) (cons (cons(car k)(cdr k)) li)
(cons (car li) (cons (cons(car k)(cdr k)) (cdr li)) )
)
(cond
( (eq (< (caar li) (car k)) (< (car k) (caadr li)) )
(cons (car k) (cons (cons (car k) (cdr k)) (cdr li)) ) )
(t (cons (car li) (INSERT (cdr li) k)) )))))
and what I want is the code of this function below. it has only one parameter li(non sorted list)
(defun Sort_List (li)(...this part...))
without using assignment, and using the INSERT function
Your insert function is very strange. In fact I find it so hard to read that I cn't work out what it's doing except that there's no need to check for both the list being null and its cdr being null. It also conses a lot of things it doesn't need, unless you are required by some part of the specification of the problem to make copies of the conses you are inserting.
Here is a version of it which is much easier to read and which does not copy when it does not need to. Note that this takes its arguments in the other order to yours:
(defun insert (thing into)
(cond ((null into)
(list thing))
((< (car thing) (car (first into)))
(cons thing into))
(t (cons (first into)
(insert thing (rest into))))))
Now, what is the algorithm for insertion sort? Well, essentially it is:
loop over the list to be sorted:
for each element, insert it into the sorted list;
finally return the sorted list.
And we're not allowed to use assignment to do this.
Well, there is a standard trick to do this sort of thing, which is to use a tail-recursive function with an accumulator argument, which accumulates the results. We can either write this function as an explicit auxiliary function, or we can make it a local function. I'm going to do the latter both because there's no reason for a function which is only ever used locally to be globally visible, and because (as I'm assuming this is homework) it makes it harder to submit directly.
So here is this version of the function:
(defun insertion-sort (l)
(labels ((is-loop (tail sorted)
(if (null tail)
sorted
(is-loop (rest tail) (insert (first tail) sorted)))))
(is-loop l '())))
This approach is fairly natural in Scheme, but not very natural in CL. An alternative approach which does not use assignment, at least explicitly, is to use do. Here is a version which uses do:
(defun insertion-sort (l)
(do ((tail l (rest tail))
(sorted '() (insert (first tail) sorted)))
((null tail) sorted)))
There are two notes about this version.
First of all, although it's not explicitly using assignment it pretty clearly implicitly is doing so. I think that's probably cheating.
Secondly it's a bit subtle why it works: what, exactly, is the value of tail in (insert (first tail) sorted), and why?
A version which is clearer, but uses loop which you are probably not meant to know about, is
(defun insertion-sort (l)
(loop for e in l
for sorted = (insert e '()) then (insert e sorted)
finally (return sorted)))
This, however, is also pretty explicitly using assignment.
As Kaz has pointed out below, there is an obvious way (which I should have seen!) of doing this using the CL reduce function. What reduce does, conceptually, is to successively collapse a sequence of elements by calling a function which takes two arguments. So, for instance
(reduce #'+ '(1 2 3 4))
is the same as
(+ (+ (+ 1 2) 3) 4)
This is easier to see if you use cons as the function:
> > (reduce #'cons '(1 2 3 4))
(((1 . 2) . 3) . 4)
> (cons (cons (cons 1 2) 3) 4)
(((1 . 2) . 3) . 4)
Well, of course, insert, as defined above, is really suitable for this: it takes an ordered list and inserts a new pair into it, returning a new ordered list. There are two problems:
my insert takes its arguments in the wrong order (this is possibly why the original one took the arguments in the other order!);
there needs to be a way of 'seeding' the initial sorted list, which will be ().
Well we can fix the wrong-argument-order either by rewriting insert, or just by wrapping it in a function which swaps the arguments: I'll do the latter because I don't want to revisit what I wrote above and I don't want two versions of the function.
You can 'seed' the initial null value by either just prepending it to the list of things to sort, or in fact reduce has a special option to provide the initial value, so we'll use that.
So using reduce we get this version of insertion-sort:
(defun insertion-sort (l)
(reduce (lambda (a e)
(insert e a))
l :initial-value '()))
And we can test this:
> (insertion-sort '((1 . a) (-100 . 2) (64.2 . "x") (-2 . y)))
((-100 . 2) (-2 . y) (1 . a) (64.2 . "x"))
and it works fine.
So the final question the is: are we yet again cheating by using some function whose definition obviously must involve assignment? Well, no, we're not, because you can quite easily write a simplified reduce and see that it does not need to use assignment. This version is much simpler than CL's reduce, and in particular it explicitly requires the initial-value argument:
(defun reduce/simple (f list accum)
(if (null list)
accum
(reduce/simple f (rest list) (funcall f accum (first list)))))
(Again, this is not very natural CL code since it relies on tail-call elimination to handle large lists, but it makes the point that you can do this without assignment.)
And so now we can write one final version of insertion-sort:
(defun insertion-sort (l)
(reduce/simple (lambda (a e)
(insert e a))
l '()))
And it's easy to check that this works as well.

'('(LIST) 'NIL 'NIL) should be a lambda expression in (hanoi('('(list)'()'())))

I'm trying to implement the Towers of Hanoi.I'm not printing out anything between my recursive calls yet, but I keep getting an error saying
'('(LIST) 'NIL 'NIL) should be a lambda expression
I've read that the reason this happens is because of a problem with the parenthesis, however I cannot seem to find what my problem is. I think it's happening in the pass-list function when I am trying to call the hanoi function. My code:
(defun pass-list(list)
(hanoi('('(list)'()'())))
)
(defun hanoi ('('(1) '(2) '(3)))
(hanoi '('(cdr 1) '(cons(car 1) 2) '(3)))
(hanoi '('(cons(car 3)1) '(2)'(cdr 3)))
)
This code has many syntax problems; there are erroneous quotes all over the place, and it looks like you're trying to use numbers as variables, which will not work. The source of the particular error message that you mentioned comes from
(hanoi('('(list)'()'())))
First, understand that the quotes in 'x and '(a b c) are shorthand for the forms (quote x) and (quote (a b c)), and that (quote anything) is the syntax for getting anything, without anything being evaluated. So '(1 2 3) gives you the list (1 2 3), and '1 gives you 1. quote is just a symbol though, and can be present in other lists, so '('(list)'()'()) is the same as (quote ((quote (list)) (quote ()) (quote ()))) which evaluates to the list ((quote (list)) (quote ()) (quote ())). Since () can also be written nil (or NIL), this last is the same as ('(list) 'NIL 'NIL). In Common Lisp, function calls look like
(function arg1 arg2 ...)
where each argi is a form, and function is either a symbol (e.g., list, hanoi, car) or a list, in which case it must be a lambda expression, e.g., (lambda (x) (+ x x)). So, in your line
(hanoi('('(list)'()'())))
we have a function call. function is hanoi, and arg1 is ('('(list)'()'())). But how will this arg1 be evaluated? Well, it's a list, which means it's a function application. What's the function part? It's
'('(list)'()'())
which is the same as
'('(list 'NIL 'NIL))
But as I just said, the only kind of list that can be function is a lambda expression. This clearly isn't a lambda expression, so you get the error that you're seeing.
I can't be sure, but it looks like you were aiming for something like the following. The line marked with ** is sort of problematic, because you're calling hanoi with some arguments, and when it returns (if it ever returns; it seems to me like you'd recurse forever in this case), you don't do anything with the result. It's ignored, and then you go onto the third line.
(defun pass-list(list)
(hanoi (list list) '() '()))
(defun hanoi (a b c)
(hanoi (rest a) (cons (first a) b) c) ; **
(hanoi (cons (first c) a) b (rest c)))
If hanoi is supposed to take a single list as an argument, and that list is supposed to contain three lists (I'm not sure why you'd do it that way instead of having hanoi take just three arguments, but that's a different question, I suppose), it's easy enough to modify; just take an argument abc and extract the first, second, and third lists from it, and pass a single list to hanoi on the recursive call:
(defun hanoi (abc)
(let ((a (first abc))
(b (second abc))
(c (third abc)))
(hanoi (list (rest a) (cons (first a) b) c))
(hanoi (list (cons (first c) a) b (rest c)))))
I'd actually probably use destructuring-bind here to simplify getting a, b, and c out of abc:
(defun hanoi (abc)
(destructuring-bind (a b c) abc
(hanoi (list (rest a) (cons (first a) b) c))
(hanoi (list (cons (first c) a) b (rest c)))))

LISP - count occurences of every value in a list

I apologize for the bad English..
I have a task to write a function called "make-bag" that counts occurences of every value in a list
and returns a list of dotted pairs like this: '((value1 . num-occurences1) (value2 . num-occurences2) ...)
For example:
(make-bag '(d c a b b c a))
((d . 1) (c . 2) (a . 2) (b . 2))
(the list doesn't have to be sorted)
Our lecturer allows us to us functions MAPCAR and also FILTER (suppose it is implemented),
but we are not allowed to use REMOVE-DUPLICATES and COUNT-IF.
He also demands that we will use recursion.
Is there a way to count every value only once without removing duplicates?
And if there is a way, can it be done by recursion?
First of, I agree with Mr. Joswig - Stackoverflow isn't a place to ask for answers to homework. But, I will answer your question in a way that you may not be able to use it directly without some extra digging and being able to understand how hash-tables and lexical closures work. Which in it's turn will be a good exercise for your advancement.
Is there a way to count every value only once without removing duplicates? And if there is a way, can it be done by recursion?
Yes, it's straight forward with hash-tables, here are two examples:
;; no state stored
(defun make-bag (lst)
(let ((hs (make-hash-table)))
(labels ((%make-bag (lst)
(if lst
(multiple-value-bind (val exists)
(gethash (car lst) hs)
(if exists
(setf (gethash (car lst) hs) (1+ val))
(setf (gethash (car lst) hs) 1))
(%make-bag (cdr lst)))
hs)))
(%make-bag lst))))
Now, if you try evaluate this form twice, you will get the same answer each time:
(gethash 'a (make-bag '(a a a a b b b c c b a 1 2 2 1 3 3 4 5 55)))
> 5
> T
(gethash 'a (make-bag '(a a a a b b b c c b a 1 2 2 1 3 3 4 5 55)))
> 5
> T
And this is a second example:
;; state is stored....
(let ((hs (make-hash-table)))
(defun make-bag (lst)
(if lst
(multiple-value-bind (val exists)
(gethash (car lst) hs)
(if exists
(setf (gethash (car lst) hs) (1+ val))
(setf (gethash (car lst) hs) 1))
(make-bag (cdr lst)))
hs)))
Now, if you try to evaluate this form twice, you will get answer doubled the second time:
(gethash 'x (make-bag '(x x x y y x z z z z x)))
> 5
> T
(gethash 'x (make-bag '(x x x y y x z z z z x)))
> 10
> T
Why did the answer doubled?
How to convert contents of a hash table to an assoc list?
Also note that recursive functions usually "eat" lists, and sometimes have an accumulator that accumulates the results of each step, which is returned at the end. Without hash-tables and ability of using remove-duplicates/count-if, logic gets a bit convoluted since you are forced to use basic functions.
Well, here's the answer, but to make it a little bit more useful as a learning exercise, I'm going to leave some blanks, you'll have to fill.
Also note that using a hash table for this task would be more advantageous because the access time to an element stored in a hash table is fixed (and usually very small), while the access time to an element stored in a list has linear complexity, so would grow with longer lists.
(defun make-bag (list)
(let (result)
(labels ((%make-bag (list)
(when list
(let ((key (assoc (car <??>) <??>)))
(if key (incf (cdr key))
(setq <??>
(cons (cons (car <??>) 1) <??>)))
(%make-bag (cdr <??>))))))
(%make-bag list))
result))
There may be variations of this function, but they would be roughly based on the same principle.

LISP disposing of pesky NILs

I have the following filter function that filters out a list, x, that doesn't satisfy the function f.
For example, I call (filter 'evenp '(0 1 2 3)) and get back (NIL 1 NIL 3). But this is exactly my problem. How do I make it so that I just get back (1 3) ?
(defun filter (f x)
(setq h (mapcar #'(lambda (x1)
(funcall f x1))
x))
(mapcar #'(lambda (a b)
(cond ((null a) b)))
h x))
i.e. the problem is right here: (lambda (a b) (cond ( (null a) b) ) ) In my cond I don't have a t , or else statement, so shouldn't it just stop right there and not return nil ? How do I make it "return" nothing, not even nil, if the (cond ( (null a) b) ) isn't satisfied?
Much appreciated. :)
Based on this question it would be:
(remove-if #'evenp '(0 1 2 3))
Ignoring the other questions raised by this post, I'll say that mapcar will always return something for each thing it's mapping over, so you can't use another mapcar to clean up the NILs there. This is what mapcar does -- it walks over the item (or items, if mapping on multiple lists, as your second attempted mapcar does) and collects the result of calling some function on those arguments.
Instead, in this situation, if you had to use mapcar for some reason, and didn't want the NILs, you could use the remove function, i.e. (remove nil (mapcar ...))
Since #stark's answer is posted above, I'll say that the remove-if function there is essentially what you're trying to implement here. (That's where the question of whether or not this is for homework becomes most relevant.)
To answer the more general question of how to splice an arbitrary number of items (including none at all) into the result, mapcan (which is semantically mapcar + append) is useful for that:
(defun filter (f xs)
(mapcan (lambda (x)
(if (funcall f x)
(list x)
nil))
xs))
mapcan is also useful when you want to map an item to multiple results:
(defun multi-numbers (xs)
(mapcan (lambda (x) (list x (+ x x) (* x x))) xs))
(multi-numbers (list 1 2 3))
;=> (1 2 1 2 4 4 3 6 9)

LISP functions that perform both symbolic and numeric operations on expressions using +, -, *, and /

I'm currently working on a LISP exercise for a small project and need severe help. This may be more or less of a beginner's question but I'm absolutely lost on writing a certain function that takes in two unevaluated functions and spits out the result dependent on if the variables were given an assignment or not.
An example would be
(setq p1 '(+ x (* x (- y (/ z 2)))))
Where
(evalexp p1 '( (x 2) (z 8) ))
returns (+ 2 (* 2 (- y 4)))
My goal is to write the evalexp function but I can't even think of where to start.
So far I have
(defun evalexp (e b) )
.. not very much. If anyone could please help or lead me in a good direction I'd be more than appreciative.
Here's a full solution. It's pretty straightforward, so I'll leave out a full explanation. Ask me in the comments if there's anything you can't figure out yourself.
(Using eval to do the actual evaluation might not be what you want in your exercise/project. Look up "meta-circular interpreter" for another way.)
(defun apply-env (exp env)
(reduce (lambda (exp bdg) (subst (cadr bdg) (car bdg) exp))
env :initial-value exp))
(defun try-eval (exp)
(if (atom exp)
exp
(let ((exp (mapcar #'try-eval exp)))
(if (every #'numberp (cdr exp))
(eval exp)
exp))))
(defun evalexp (exp env)
(try-eval (apply-env exp env)))
Here's a hint, this is how you might do it (in pseudocode):
function replace(vars, list):
for each element of list:
if it's an atom:
if there's an association in vars:
replace atom with value in vars
else:
leave atom alone
else:
recursively apply replace to the sublist
There will certainly be some details to work out as you convert this to Lisp code.