I am a new at F# and i try to do this task:
Make a function compare : string list -> string list -> int that takes two string lists and returns: -1, 0 or 1
Please help. I spend a lot of time, and i can not understand how to implement this task.
Given the task I assume what your professor wants to teach you with this exercise. I'll try to give you a starting point without
Confusing you
Presenting a 'done-deal' solution
I assume the goal of this task is to work with recursive functions and pattern matching to element-wise compare their elements. It could looks somewhat like this here
open System
let aList = [ "Apple"; "Banana"; "Coconut" ]
let bList = [ "Apple"; "Banana"; "Coconut" ]
let cList = [ "Apple"; "Zebra" ]
let rec doSomething f (a : string list) (b : string list) =
match (a, b) with
| ([], []) ->
printfn "Both are empty"
| (x::xs, []) ->
printfn "A has elements (we can unpack the first element as x and the rest as xs) and B is empty"
| ([], x::xs) ->
printfn "A is empty and B has elements (we can unpack the first element as x and the rest as xs)"
| (x::xs, y::ys) ->
f x y
printfn "Both A and B have elements. We can unpack them as the first elements x and y and their respective tails xs and ys"
doSomething f xs ys
let isItTheSame (a : string) (b : string) =
if String.Equals(a, b) then
printfn "%s is equals to %s" a b
else
printfn "%s is not equals to %s" a b
doSomething isItTheSame aList bList
doSomething isItTheSame aList cList
The example has three different lists, two of them being equal and one of them being different. The doSomething function takes a function (string -> string -> unit) and two lists of strings.
Within the function you see a pattern match as well as a recursive call of doSomething in the last match block. The signatures aren't exactly what you need and you might want to think about how to change the parametrization for cases where you don't want to stop the recursion (the last match block - if the strings are equal you want to keep on comparing, right?).
Just take the code and try it out in FSI. I'm confident, that you'll find the solution 🙂
In F# many collections are comparable if their element type is:
let s1 = [ "a"; "b" ]
let s2 = [ "foo"; "bar" ]
compare s1 s2 // -5
let f1 = [ (fun () -> 1); fun () -> 2 ]
let f2 = [ (fun () -> 3); fun () -> 42 ]
// compare f1 f2 (* error FS0001: The type '(unit -> int)' does not support the 'comparison' constraint. *)
so
let slcomp (s1 : string list) s2 = compare s1 s2 |> sign
Posting for reference as the original question is answered already.
Related
How would I go about adding sub-lists.
For example, [ [10;2;10]; [10;50;10]] ----> [20;52;20] that is 10+10, 2+50 and 10+10. Not sure how to start this.
Fold is a higher order function:
let input = [[10;2;10]; [10;50;10]]
input |> Seq.fold (fun acc elem -> acc + (List.nth elem 1)) 0
val it : int = 52
Solution 1: Recursive version
We need a helper function to add two lists by summing elements one-to-one. It is recursive and assumes that both lists are of the same length:
let rec sum2Lists (l1:List<int>) (l2:List<int>) =
match (l1,l2) with
| ([],[]) -> []
| (x1::t1, x2::t2) -> (x1+x2)::sum2Lists t1 t2
Then the following recursive function can process a list of lists, using our helper function :
let rec sumLists xs =
match xs with
| [] -> [] // empty list
| x1::[] -> x1 // a single sublist
| xh::xt -> sum2Lists xh (sumLists xt) // add the head to recursion on tail
let myres = sumLists mylist
Solution 2: higher order function
Our helper function can be simplified, using List.map2:
let sum2hfLists (l1:List<int>) (l2:List<int>) = List.map2 (+) l1 l2
We can then use List.fold to create an on the flow accumulator using our helper function:
let sumhfList (l:List<List<int>>) =
match l with
| [] -> [] // empty list of sublist
| h::[] -> h // list with a single sublist
| h::t -> List.fold (fun a x -> sum2hfLists a x) h t
The last match case is applied only for lists of at least two sublists. The trick is to take the first sublist as starting point of the accumulator, and let fold execute on the rest of the list.
I'm new to F# and want to implement a least common multiple function of a list by doing it recursively, e.g. lcm(a,b,c) = lcm(a, lcm(b,c)), where lcm of two elements is calculated from the gcd.
I have the following code. I try to match the input of the lcm function with a list of two elements, and otherwise a general list, which I split up into its first element and the remaining part. The part "lcm (tail)" gives a compiler error. It says it was expected to have type "int" but has type "int list -> int". It looks like it says that the expression "lcm tail" is itself a function, which I don't understand. Why is it not an int?
let rec gcd a b =
if b = 0
then abs a
else gcd b (a % b)
let lcmSimple a b = a*b/(gcd a b)
let rec lcm list = function
| [a;b] -> lcmSimple a b
| head::tail -> lcmSimple (head) (lcm (tail))
Best regards.
When defining the function as let f = function | ..., the argument to the function is implicit, as it is interpreted as let f x = match x with | ....
Thus let rec lcm list = function |... is a function of two variables, which are list and the implicit variable. This is why the compiler claims that lcm tail is a function - only one variable has been passed, where it expected two. A better version of the code is
let rec gcd a b =
if b = 0
then abs a
else gcd b (a % b)
let lcmSimple a b = a*b/(gcd a b)
let rec lcm = function
| [a;b] -> lcmSimple a b
| head::tail -> lcmSimple (head) (lcm (tail))
| [] -> 1
where the last case has been included to complete the pattern.
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
Define a function which computes the sum of all the integers in a
given list of lists of integers. No 'if-then-else' or any auxiliary
function.
I'm new to to functional programming and am having trouble with the correct syntax with SML. To begin the problem I tried to create a function using pattern matching that just adds the first two elements of the list. After I got this working, I was going to use recursion to add the rest of the elements. Though, I can't even seem to get this simple function to compile.
fun listAdd [_,[]] = 0
| listAnd [[],_] = 0
| listAnd [[x::xs],[y::ys]] = x + y;
fun listAdd [] = 0
| listAdd ([]::L) = listAdd L
| listAdd ((x::xs)::L) = x + listAdd (xs::L)
should do what it looks like you want.
Also, it looks like part of the problem with your function is that you give the function different names (listAdd and listAnd) in different clauses.
For the sake of simplicity, I'd say you probably want this :
fun listAdd : (int * int) list -> int list
Now, I would simply define this as an abstraction of the unzip function :
fun listAdd ls :
case ls of
[] => 0
| (x,y) :: ls' => (x + y) + (listAdd ls')
I think there is no point in taking two separate lists. Simply take a list that has a product of ints. If you have to build this, you can call the zip function :
fun zip xs ys :
case xs, ys of
[], [] => []
| xs, _ => []
| _, ys => []
| x::xs', y::ys' => (x,y) :: (zip xs' ys')
In general, if you really wanted, you can write a far more abstract function that is of the general type :
fun absProdList : ((`a * `b) -> `c) -> (`a * `b) list -> `c list
This function is simply :
fun absProdList f ls =
case l of
[] => []
| (x,y) :: ls' => (f (x,y)) :: (absProdList f ls')
This function is a supertype of the addList function you mentioned. Simply define an anonymous function to recreate your addList as :
fun addList' ls =
absProdList (fn (x,y) => x + y) ls
As you can see, defining the generic type-functions makes specific calls to functions that are type-substitutions to the general one far easier and much more elegant with the appropriate combination of : Currying, Higher-Order Functions and Anonymous Functions.
You probably don't want an int list list as input, but simply an int list * int list (pair of int lists). Besides this, your function seems to returns numbers rather than a list of numbers. For this you would use recursion.
fun listAdd (x::xs, y::ys) = (x + y) :: listAdd (xs, ys)
| listAdd ([], _) = []
| listAdd (_, []) = [] (* The last two cases can be merged *)
You probably want to read a book on functional programming fron the first page and on. Pick for example Notes on Programming in SML/NJ by Riccardo Pucella if you want a free one.
Take this example code (ignore it being horribly inefficient for the moment)
let listToString (lst:list<'a>) = ;;' prettify fix
let rec inner (lst:list<'a>) buffer = ;;' prettify fix
match List.length lst with
| 0 -> buffer
| _ -> inner (List.tl lst) (buffer + ((List.hd lst).ToString()))
inner lst ""
This is a common pattern I keep coming across in F#, I need to have an inner function who recurses itself over some value - and I only need this function once, is there in any way possible to call a lambda from within it self (some magic keyword or something) ? I would like the code to look something like this:
let listToString2 (lst:list<'a>) = ;;' prettify fix
( fun
(lst:list<'a>) buffer -> match List.length lst with ;;' prettify fix
| 0 -> buffer
| _ -> ##RECURSE## (List.tl lst) (buffer + ((List.hd lst).ToString()))
) lst ""
But as you might expect there is no way to refer to the anonymous function within itself, which is needed where I put ##RECURSE##
Yes, it's possible using so called y-combinators (or fixed-point combinators). Ex:
let rec fix f x = f (fix f) x
let fact f = function
| 0 -> 1
| x -> x * f (x-1)
let _ = (fix fact) 5 (* evaluates to "120" *)
I don't know articles for F# but this haskell entry might also be helpful.
But: I wouldn't use them if there is any alternative - They're quite hard to understand.
Your code (omit the type annotations here) is a standard construct and much more expressive.
let listToString lst =
let rec loop acc = function
| [] -> acc
| x::xs -> loop (acc ^ (string x)) xs
loop "" lst
Note that although you say you use the function only once, technically you refer to it by name twice, which is why it makes sense to give it a name.