I'm learning Elixir and I'm having a difficulty with this simple problem:
I have a list of values:
my_list = ["a", "b", "c", "y", "z", "a", "e"]
And I have a map:
my_map = %{"a" => -1, "b" => 0, "c" => 1, "d" => 2, "e" => 3}
I want to loop through my_list, find all key occurrences in my_map and sum the values from my_map if the occurrence happened.
In the above example it should return 2 because:
-1 + 0 + 1 + (ignored) + (ignored) - 1 + 3
# => 2
This is a very easy thing to do in languages with mutable variables (we can loop the list and add a counter). I'm working on changing my mindset.
Thank you for help!
I'm working on changing my mindset.
Admirable. You'll find great success in Elixir if you're willing to change your mindset and try to think more functionally. With that in mind, let's break the problem down.
I want to loop through my_list
More precisely, you want to do something to each element of the list and get a list of the results. That's Enum.map/2.
Enum.map(my_list, fn x -> ...)
Now, ... needs to be replaced with what we want to do to each list element. We want to get the corresponding map elements, ignoring those that are not present. Since we're taking a sum, "ignoring" really just means "replacing with zero". Map.get/3 can get a value from a map, using a default if not provided.
Enum.map(my_list, fn x -> Map.get(my_map, x, 0) end)
Now, we have a list of numbers. We just want the sum. That could be done in terms of Enum.reduce/3, but summing is a common enough task that it has its own function: Enum.sum/1.
Enum.sum(Enum.map(my_list, fn x -> Map.get(my_map, x, 0) end))
Finally, this reads backwards. It says "sum the result of mapping over the list", when it would read much cleaner as "take the list, get the elements from the map, then take a sum". We can clean it up with the pipe operator. The following is equivalent to the above.
my_list |> Enum.map(fn x -> Map.get(my_map, x, 0) end) |> Enum.sum
This is a nice use case for a comprehension:
for key <- my_list, val = my_map[key], reduce: 0 do
acc -> acc + val
end
Here the val = my_map[key] is a filter. When key is not in my_map, the result will be nil, which is a falsy value so is skipped.
While both answers given here are perfectly valid, Iām to post another one using plain recursion, for the sake of completeness.
defmodule Summer do
def consume(list, map, acc \\ 0) # head
def consume([], _, acc), do: acc # exhausted
def consume([h | t], map, acc) when is_map_key(map, h),
do: consume(t, map, acc + Map.fetch!(map, h))
def consume([_h | t], map, acc), do: consume(t, map, acc)
end
Summer.consume my_list, my_map
#ā 2
Related
I have the following question "Given a list of integer pairs, write a function to return a list of even numbers in that list in sml".
this is what I've achieved so far
val x = [(6, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6), (7, 8), (9, 10)];
fun isEven(num : int) =
if num mod 2 = 0 then num else 0;
fun evenNumbers(list : (int * int) list) =
if null list then [] else
if isEven(#1 (hd list)) <> 0
then if isEven(#2 (hd list)) <> 0
then #1 (hd list) :: #1 (hd list) :: evenNumbers(tl list)
else []
else if isEven(#2 (hd list)) <> 0
then #1 (hd list) :: evenNumbers(tl list)
else [];
evenNumbers(x);
the result should be like this [6,2,4,6,8,10]
any help would be appreciated.
I see two obvious problems.
If both the first and second number are even, you do
#1 (hd list) :: #1 (hd list) :: evenNumbers(tl list)
which adds the first number twice and ignores the second.
If the first number is odd and the second even, you do
#1 (hd list) :: evenNumbers(tl list)
which adds the number that you know is odd and ignores the one you know is even.
Programming with selectors and conditionals gets complicated very quickly (as you've noticed).
With pattern matching, you could write
fun evenNumbers [] = []
| evenNumber ((x,y)::xys) = ...
and reduce the risk of using the wrong selector.
However, this still makes for complicated logic, and there is a better way.
Consider the simpler problem of filtering the odd numbers out of a list of numbers, not pairs.
If you transform the input into such a list, you only need to solve that simpler problem (and there's a fair chance that you've already solved something very similar in a previous exercise).
Exercise: implement this transformation. Its type will be ('a * 'a) list -> 'a list.
Also, your isEven is more useful if it produces a truth value (if you ask someone, "is 36 even?", "36" is a very strange answer).
fun isEven x = x mod 2 = 0
Now, evenNumbers can be implemented as "just" a combination of other, more general, functions.
So running your current code,
- evenNumbers [(6, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6), (7, 8), (9, 10)];
val it = [6,6,3,5,7,9] : int list
suggests that you're not catching all even numbers, and that you're catching some odd numbers.
The function isEven sounds very much like you want to have the type int -> bool like so:
fun isEven n =
n mod 2 = 0
Instead of addressing the logic error of your current solution, I would like to propose a syntactically much simpler approach which is to use pattern matching and fewer explicit type annotations. One basis for such a solution could look like:
fun evenNumbers [] = ...
| evenNumbers ((x,y)::pairs) = ...
Using pattern matching is an alternative to if-then-else: the [] pattern is equivalent to if null list ... and the (x,y)::pairs pattern matches when the input list is non-empty (holds at least one element, being (x,y). At the same time, it deconstructs this one element into its parts, x and y. So in the second function body you can express isEven x and isEven y.
As there is a total of four combinations of whether x and y are even or not, this could easily end up with a similarly complicated nest of if-then-else's. For this I might do either one of two things:
Use case-of (and call evenNumbers recursively on pairs):
fun evenNumbers [] = ...
| evenNumbers ((x,y)::pairs) =
case (isEven x, isEven y) of
... => ...
| ... => ...
Flatten the list of pairs into a list of integers and filter it:
fun flatten [] = ...
| flatten ((x,y)::pairs) = ...
val evenNumbers pairs = ...
I am fairly new to functional programming and I do not understand my error here. I am trying to make a function that takes an integer list and returns both the sum of the even elements and the sum of the odd elements. The error I am getting is in line 1, and it states: "Error: right-hand-side of clause doesn't agree with function result type [overload conflict] ...". I don't understand the error, and I would appreciate any help in understanding my error.
fun add(nil) = 0
| add([x]) = x
| add(x :: xs) =
let
val evenList = xs;
val oddList = x :: xs
in
(hd evenList + add(tl(tl(evenList))), hd oddList + add(tl(tl(oddList))))
end;
The reason for the type error is that the function should return a pair, but your base cases don't.
I suspect you got to that code by thinking about skipping every other element, dividing the list by skipping.
There's a different way to approach this.
Consider the list [a,b,c,d].
Counting from 1, the elements are numbered
1 2 3 4
a b c d
Now consider the positions in the tail of the list.
They are
1 2 3
b c d
That is, odd positions in the tail are even positions in the entire list, and even positions in the tail are odd in the entire list.
This means that if we recursively compute "odds and evens" in the tail, we will get the sums from the tail, where its "odds" is our "evens", and if we add our head to the tail's "evens", we will get the "odds" we want.
All we need now is a good base case ā and the sums of an empty list must be (0, 0).
Something like this:
fun add [] = (0,0)
| add (x::xs) = case add xs of
(odds, evens) => (x + evens, odds)
or, you can deconstruct the recursive result with a let-binding instead of case:
fun add [] = (0,0)
| add (x::xs) = let val (odds, evens) = add xs
in
(x + evens, odds)
end
I have finally found an excellent entry point into functional programming with elm, and boy, do I like it, yet I still lack some probably fundamental elegance concerning a few concepts.
I often find myself writing code similar to the one below, which seems to be doing what it should, but if someone more experienced could suggest a more compact and direct approach, I am sure that could give some valuable insights into this so(u)rcery.
What I imagine this could boil down to, is something like the following
(<-> is a vector subtraction operator):
edgeDirections : List Vector -> List Vector
edgeDirections corners = List.map2 (\p v -> p <-> v) corners (shiftr 1 corners)
but I don't really have a satisfying approach to a method that would do a shiftr.
But the rules of stackoverflow demand it, here is what I tried. I wrote an ugly example of a possible usage for shiftr (I absolutely dislike the Debug.crash and I am not happy about the Maybe):
Given a list of vectors (the corner points of a polygon), calculate the directional vectors by calculating the difference of each corner-vector to its previous one, starting with the diff between the first and the last entry in the list.
[v1,v2,v3] -> [v1-v3,v2-v1,v3-v2]
Here goes:
edgeDir : Vector -> ( Maybe Vector, List Vector ) -> ( Maybe Vector, List Vector )
edgeDir p ( v, list ) =
case v of
Nothing ->
Debug.crash ("nono")
Just vector ->
( Just p, list ++ [ p <-> vector ] )
edgeDirections : List Vector -> List Vector
edgeDirections corners =
let
last =
List.head <| List.reverse corners
in
snd <| List.foldl edgeDir ( last, [] ) corners
main =
show <| edgeDirections [ Vector -1 0, Vector 0 1, Vector 1 0 ]
I appreciate any insight into how this result could be achieved in a more direct manner, maybe using existing language constructs I am not aware of yet, or any pointers on how to lessen the pain with Maybe. The latter may Just not be possible, but I am certain that the former will a) blow me away and b) make me scratch my head a couple times :)
Thank you, and many thanks for this felicitous language!
If Elm had built-in init and last functions, this could be cleaner.
You can get away from all those Maybes by doing some pattern matching. Here's my attempt using just pattern matching and an accumulator.
import List exposing (map2, append, reverse)
shiftr list =
let shiftr' acc rest =
case rest of
[] -> []
[x] -> x :: reverse acc
(x::xs) -> shiftr' (x::acc) xs
in shiftr' [] list
edgeDirections vectors =
map2 (<->) vectors <| shiftr vectors
Notice also the shortened writing of the mapping function of (<->), which is equivalent to (\p v -> p <-> v).
Suppose Elm did have an init and last function - let's just define those quickly here:
init list =
case list of
[] -> Nothing
[_] -> Just []
(x::xs) -> Maybe.map ((::) x) <| init xs
last list =
case list of
[] -> Nothing
[x] -> Just x
(_::xs) -> last xs
Then your shiftr function could be shortened to something like:
shiftr list =
case (init list, last list) of
(Just i, Just l) -> l :: i
_ -> list
Just after I "hung up", I came up with this, but I am sure this can still be greatly improved upon, if it's even correct (and it only works for n=1)
shiftr : List a -> List a
shiftr list =
let
rev =
List.reverse list
in
case List.head rev of
Nothing ->
list
Just t ->
[ t ] ++ (List.reverse <| List.drop 1 rev)
main =
show (shiftr [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ] |> shiftr)
I'm building a merge sort function and my split method is giving me a value restriction error. I'm using 2 accumulating parameters, the 2 lists resulting from the split, that I package into a tuple in the end for the return. However I'm getting a value restriction error and I can't figure out what the problem is. Does anyone have any ideas?
let split lst =
let a = []
let b = []
let ctr = 0
let rec helper (lst,l1,l2,ctr) =
match lst with
| [] -> []
| x::xs -> if ctr%2 = 0 then helper(xs, x::l1, l2, ctr+1)
else
helper(xs, l1, x::l2, ctr+1)
helper (lst, a, b, ctr)
(a,b)
Any input is appreciated.
The code, as you have written it, doesn't really make sense. F# uses immutable values by default, therefore your function, as it's currently written, can be simplified to this:
let split lst =
let a = []
let b = []
(a,b)
This is probably not what you want. In fact, due to immutable bindings, there is no value in predeclaring a, b and ctr.
Here is a recursive function that will do the trick:
let split lst =
let rec helper lst l1 l2 ctr =
match lst with
| [] -> l1, l2 // return accumulated lists
| x::xs ->
if ctr%2 = 0 then
helper xs (x::l1) l2 (ctr+1) // prepend x to list 1 and increment
else
helper xs l1 (x::l2) (ctr+1) // prepend x to list 2 and increment
helper lst [] [] 0
Instead of using a recursive function, you could also solve this problem using List.fold, fold is a higher order function which generalises the accumulation process that we described explicitly in the recursive function above.
This approach is a bit more concise but very likely less familiar to someone new to functional programming, so I've tried to describe this process in more detail.
let split2 lst =
/// Take a running total of each list and a index*value and return a new
/// pair of lists with the supplied value prepended to the correct list
let splitFolder (l1, l2) (i, x) =
match i % 2 = 0 with
|true -> x :: l1, l2 // return list 1 with x prepended and list2
|false -> l1, x :: l2 // return list 1 and list 2 with x prepended
lst
|> List.mapi (fun i x -> i, x) // map list of values to list of index*values
|> List.fold (splitFolder) ([],[]) // fold over the list using the splitFolder function
I have two lists of equal length. I want to filter the elements of the first list by looking, if the element, with the same index in the second list, has a true boolean value.
Example:
[1,2,3,4,5]:int list
[true,false,false,true,false]:bool list
Expected result: [1,4]
I know two ways I could achieve this:
1) Write a function that takes two lists. For every element in the first list, that I want to append, check if the current(head) element of the second list is true.
2) Zip the two lists and filter it according to the boolean value.
There should be an easier to go about this, right?
Not really. The cleanest way to do this is probably
List.map (fn (x,y) => x) (List.filter (fn (x,y) => y) (ListPair.zip (L1,L2)))
or
List.map Option.valOf (List.filter Option.isSome (ListPair.map(fn (x,y) => if y then SOME x else NONE) (L1,L2)))
The recursive function isn't too bad, either:
fun foo ([],[]) = []
| foo ([],L) = raise Fail "Different lengths"
| foo (L,[]) = raise Fail "Different lengths"
| foo (x::xs, b::bs) = if b then x::foo(xs,bs) else foo(xs,bs)
Those are pretty much the two options you have; either recurse two lists at once, or combine them into one list of tuples and recurse that. There are several combinators you could use to achieve the latter.
val foo = [1,2,3,4,5];
val bar = [true,false,true,true,false];
val pairs = ListPair.zip (foo, bar)
Once zipped, here are two other ways you can do it:
val result = List.foldr (fn ((n,b), res) => if b then n::res else res) [] pairs
val result = List.mapPartial (fn (n,b) => if b then SOME n else NONE) pairs
The simplest is probably
ListPair.foldr (fn (x,y,z) => if y then x :: z else z) [] (L1, L2)
Don't know if ML has list comprehension, but if your language has it:
[ x | (x, True) <- zip xs ys ]