In attempting to learn Ocaml and functional languages in general, I have been looking into pattern matching. I was reading this documentation, and decided to try the following exercise for myself:
Make an expression that evaluates to true when an integer 4-tuple is input such that each element in the 4-tuple is equal.
(4, 4, 4, 4) -> true
(4, 2, 4, 4) -> false
I find that doing pattern matching for the specificity of the value of the elements to not be obvious. This is the code I wrote.
let sqr x = match x with
(a, a, a, a) -> true
| (_, _, _, _) -> false ;;
Of course, this code throws the following error:
Error: Variable a is bound several times in this matching
How else can I not only enforce that x is a 4-tuple, but also of strictly integers that are equal?
(Also, of course a "square" tuple should not allow non-positive integers, but I'm more concerned with the aforementioned problem as of now).
`
As you found out, unlike some other languages' pattern-matching systems, you can't do this in OCaml. What you can do is match each element of the tuple separately while using guards to only succeed if some property (like equivalence) holds across them:
let sqr x =
match x with
| (a, b, c, d) when a = b && b = c && c = d -> `Equal
| (a, b, c, d) when (a < b && b < c && c < d)
|| (a > b && b > c && c > d) -> `Ordered
| _ -> `Boring
You have many ways to do pattern-matching, pattern matching is not only when using the match keyword
let fourtuple_equals (a,b,c,d) = List.for_all ((=) a) [b;c;d]
val fourtuple_equals : 'a * 'a * 'a * 'a -> bool = <fun>
Here you have a pattern matching directly in the parameter in order to access your four elements tuple.
In this example I use a list to have a more concise code, but is not the more efficient.
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'm reading https://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/99problems.html and it has 2 examples:
# let rec last_two = function
| [] | [_] -> None
| [x;y] -> Some (x,y)
| _::t -> last_two t;;
I understand the first one: _::t means pattern match anything and call it t
But at
# let rec at k = function
| [] -> None
| h :: t -> if k = 1 then Some h else at (k-1) t;;
I don't understand what h means. For me it should be _:: t -> ... to match anything and call it t
The pattern _ :: t doesn't mean what you say. It matches any non-empty list and calls the tail of the list t.
The pattern h :: t matches any non-empty list, calls the head of the list h (one element, the first one), and the tail of the list t (zero or more elements after the first one).
The operator :: is the list constructor (often called "cons"), which is why these patterns match lists.
Here are examples of :: as list constructor:
# true :: [];;
- : bool list = [true]
# 1 :: [2; 3];;
- : int list = [1; 2; 3]
As is usual in OCaml, the pattern for a list uses the same syntax as the constructor.
# match [1;2;3] with [] -> None | h :: t -> Some (h, t);;
- : (int * int list) option = Some (1, [2; 3])
The h::t pattern matches the head and tail of the list to the variables h and t.
So if I pattern match like this:
match [1; 2; 3] with
| h::t -> (* Some code... *)
h will have a value of 1, and t will have the value of [2; 3].
:: is a constructor. Pattern matching in this fashion pattern matches against constructors. They create a new datatype out of two values. :: is a constructor, and its type, list, is recursive. Here's a sample definition of the list type:
type 'a list =
| []
| (::) 'a * ('a list)
;;
So the list type is recursive because its constructor, ::, calls itself.
Honestly, I could write half a book on lists. They're the bread and butter of functional programming languages.
If you're wondering why you can't pattern match on operators, this is why. You can't pattern match on operators, only constructors.
Yes, indeed when you type in a function let's take for example this one:
let is_empty (l: int list) : int =
begin match l with
| [] -> 1
| h::t -> 0
end;;
Therefore, in this function that tests if a list is empty or not, if [], an empty list it returns one or in boolean true but if h::t, meaning that there is one or more value, the function returns 0, meaning it's false.
Assume you have 2 Integer Variables a and b
How would you swap them only if a > b by using a match expression?
If a <= b do not swap the ints.
In an imperative language:
if (a > b){
int temp=a;
a=b;
b=temp;
}
Doing the same in ocaml seems surprisingly hard.
I tried
let swap a b =
match a,b with
| a,b when a > b -> b,a
| a,b when a <= b -> a,b
I am trying to do this because in the following function call, I want to make sure that x is the bigger of the two variables.
One easy way :
let swap a b =
if (a>b) then (b,a)
else (a,b)
But this is not equivalent to the C code, your C code is swapping the value of the variable - this is how imperative language are doing.
In Ocaml, there is no side-effect (except if you use reference to some int). This swap function will return a tuple whose members are always ordered (the first member will be always smaller than the second order).
Without state, you cannot "swap" the values of the variables since the variables are immutable. Your best bet is to use a tuple and introduce new variables in the scope. Example:
let diff a b =
let (min, max) = if a <= b then (a, b) else (b, a)
in max - min
You can of course use the same identifiers and shadow the original variables:
let diff a b =
let (a, b) = if a <= b then (a, b) else (b, a)
in b - a
It doesn't really help with readability though.
Just for reference, if you'd like to swap the values in two refs, it would look like the following:
let swap a_ref b_ref =
let a, b = !a_ref, !b_ref in
a_ref := b;
b_ref := a
;;
which has the type val swap : 'a ref -> 'a ref -> unit.
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 have a tiny grammar represented as a variant type term with strings that are tokens/part of tokens (type term).
Given expressions from the grammar, I am collecting all strings from expressions and pack them into sets (function vars). Finally, I want to create some graph with these sets as vertices (lines 48-49).
For some reason, the graph created in the such sophisticated way does not recognise sets containing same variables and creates multiple vertices with the same content. I don't really understand why this is happening.
Here is minimal working example with this behaviour:
(* demo.ml *)
type term =
| Var of string
| List of term list * string option
| Tuple of term list
module SSet = Set.Make(
struct
let compare = String.compare
type t = string
end)
let rec vars = function
| Var v -> SSet.singleton v
| List (x, tail) ->
let tl = match tail with
| None -> SSet.empty
| Some var -> SSet.singleton var in
SSet.union tl (List.fold_left SSet.union SSet.empty (List.map vars x))
| Tuple x -> List.fold_left SSet.union SSet.empty (List.map vars x)
module Node = struct
type t = SSet.t
let compare = SSet.compare
let equal = SSet.equal
let hash = Hashtbl.hash
end
module G = Graph.Imperative.Digraph.ConcreteBidirectional(Node)
(* dot output for the graph for illustration purposes *)
module Dot = Graph.Graphviz.Dot(struct
include G
let edge_attributes _ = []
let default_edge_attributes _ = []
let get_subgraph _ = None
let vertex_attributes _ = []
let vertex_name v = Printf.sprintf "{%s}" (String.concat ", " (SSet.elements v))
let default_vertex_attributes _ = []
let graph_attributes _ = []
end)
let _ =
(* creation of two terms *)
let a, b = List ([Var "a"], Some "b"), Tuple [Var "a"; Var "b"] in
(* get strings from terms packed into sets *)
let avars, bvars = vars a, vars b in
let g = G.create () in
G.add_edge g avars bvars;
Printf.printf "The content is the same: [%s] [%s]\n"
(String.concat ", " (SSet.elements avars))
(String.concat ", " (SSet.elements bvars));
Printf.printf "compare/equal output: %d %b\n"
(SSet.compare avars bvars)
(SSet.equal avars bvars);
Printf.printf "Hash values are different: %d %d\n"
(Hashtbl.hash avars) (Hashtbl.hash bvars);
Dot.fprint_graph Format.str_formatter g;
Printf.printf "Graph representation:\n%s" (Format.flush_str_formatter ())
In order to compile, type ocamlc -c -I +ocamlgraph demo.ml; ocamlc -I +ocamlgraph graph.cma demo.cmo. When the program is executed you get this output:
The content is the same: [a, b] [a, b]
compare/equal output: 0 true
Hash values are different: 814436103 1017954833
Graph representation:
digraph G {
{a, b};
{a, b};
{a, b} -> {a, b};
{a, b} -> {a, b};
}
To sum up, I am curious why there are non-equal hash values for sets and two identical vertices are created in the graph, despite the fact these sets are equal by all other means.
I suspect the general answer is that OCaml's built-in hashing is based on rather physical properties of a value, while set equality is a more abstract notion. If you represent sets as ordered binary trees, there are many trees that represent the same set (as is well known). These will be equal as sets but might very well hash to different values.
If you want hashing to work for sets, you might have to supply your own function.
As Jeffrey pointed out, it seems that the problem is in the definition of the hash function that is part of Node module.
Changing it to let hash x = Hashtbl.hash (SSet.elements x) fixed the issue.