let list p = if List.contains " " p || List.contains null p then false else true
I have such a function to check if the list is well formatted or not. The list shouldn't have an empty string and nulls. I don't get what I am missing since Check.Verbose list returns falsifiable output.
How should I approach the problem?
I think you don't quite understand FsCheck yet. When you do Check.Verbose someFunction, FsCheck generates a bunch of random input for your function, and fails if the function ever returns false. The idea is that the function you pass to Check.Verbose should be a property that will always be true no matter what the input is. For example, if you reverse a list twice then it should return the original list no matter what the original list was. This property is usually expressed as follows:
let revTwiceIsSameList (lst : int list) =
List.rev (List.rev lst) = lst
Check.Verbose revTwiceIsSameList // This will pass
Your function, on the other hand, is a good, useful function that checks whether a list is well-formed in your data model... but it's not a property in the sense that FsCheck uses the term (that is, a function that should always return true no matter what the input is). To make an FsCheck-style property, you want to write a function that looks generally like:
let verifyMyFunc (input : string list) =
if (input is well-formed) then // TODO: Figure out how to check that
myFunc input = true
else
myFunc input = false
Check.Verbose verifyMyFunc
(Note that I've named your function myFunc instead of list, because as a general rule, you should never name a function list. The name list is a data type (e.g., string list or int list), and if you name a function list, you'll just confuse yourself later on when the same name has two different meanings.)
Now, the problem here is: how do you write the "input is well-formed" part of my verifyMyFunc example? You can't just use your function to check it, because that would be testing your function against itself, which is not a useful test. (The test would essentially become "myFunc input = myFunc input", which would always return true even if your function had a bug in it — unless your function returned random input, of course). So you'd have to write another function to check if the input is well-formed, and here the problem is that the function you've written is the best, most correct way to check for well-formed input. If you wrote another function to check, it would boil down to not (List.contains "" || List.contains null) in the end, and again, you'd be essentially checking your function against itself.
In this specific case, I don't think FsCheck is the right tool for the job, because your function is so simple. Is this a homework assignment, where your instructor is requiring you to use FsCheck? Or are you trying to learn FsCheck on your own, and using this exercise to teach yourself FsCheck? If it's the former, then I'd suggest pointing your instructor to this question and see what he says about my answer. If it's the latter, then I'd suggest finding some slightly more complicated function to use to learn FsCheck. A useful function here would be one where you can find some property that should always be true, like in the List.rev example (reversing a list twice should restore the original list, so that's a useful property to test with). Or if you're having trouble finding an always-true property, at least find a function that you can implement in at least two different ways, so that you can use FsCheck to check that both implementations return the same result for any given input.
Adding to #rmunn's excellent answer:
if you wanted to test myFunc (yes I also renamed your list function) you could do it by creating some fixed cases that you already know the answer to, like:
let myFunc p = if List.contains " " p || List.contains null p then false else true
let tests =
testList "myFunc" [
testCase "empty list" <| fun()-> "empty" |> Expect.isTrue (myFunc [ ])
testCase "nonempty list" <| fun()-> "hi" |> Expect.isTrue (myFunc [ "hi" ])
testCase "null case" <| fun()-> "null" |> Expect.isFalse (myFunc [ null ])
testCase "empty string" <| fun()-> "\"\"" |> Expect.isFalse (myFunc [ "" ])
]
Tests.runTests config tests
Here I am using a testing library called Expecto.
If you run this you would see one of the tests fails:
Failed! myFunc/empty string:
"". Actual value was true but had expected it to be false.
because your original function has a bug; it checks for space " " instead of empty string "".
After you fix it all tests pass:
4 tests run in 00:00:00.0105346 for myFunc – 4 passed, 0 ignored, 0
failed, 0 errored. Success!
At this point you checked only 4 simple and obvious cases with zero or one element each. Many times functions fail when fed more complex data. The problem is how many more test cases can you add? The possibilities are literally infinite!
FsCheck
This is where FsCheck can help you. With FsCheck you can check for properties (or rules) that should always be true. It takes a little bit of creativity to think of good ones to test for and granted, sometimes it is not easy.
In your case we can test for concatenation. The rule would be like this:
If two lists are concatenated the result of MyFunc applied to the concatenation should be true if both lists are well formed and false if any of them is malformed.
You can express that as a function this way:
let myFuncConcatenation l1 l2 = myFunc (l1 # l2) = (myFunc l1 && myFunc l2)
l1 # l2 is the concatenation of both lists.
Now if you call FsCheck:
FsCheck.Verbose myFuncConcatenation
It tries a 100 different combinations trying to make it fail but in the end it gives you the Ok:
0:
["X"]
["^"; ""]
1:
["C"; ""; "M"]
[]
2:
[""; ""; ""]
[""; null; ""; ""]
3:
...
Ok, passed 100 tests.
This does not necessarily mean your function is correct, there still could be a failing combination that FsCheck did not try or it could be wrong in a different way. But it is a pretty good indication that it is correct in terms of the concatenation property.
Testing for the concatenation property with FsCheck actually allowed us to call myFunc 300 times with different values and prove that it did not crash or returned an unexpected value.
FsCheck does not replace case by case testing, it complements it:
Notice that if you had run FsCheck.Verbose myFuncConcatenation over the original function, which had a bug, it would still pass. The reason is the bug was independent of the concatenation property. This means that you should always have the case by case testing where you check the most important cases and you can complement that with FsCheck to test other situations.
Here are other properties you can check, these test the two false conditions independently:
let myFuncHasNulls l = if List.contains null l then myFunc l = false else true
let myFuncHasEmpty l = if List.contains "" l then myFunc l = false else true
Check.Quick myFuncHasNulls
Check.Quick myFuncHasEmpty
// Ok, passed 100 tests.
// Ok, passed 100 tests.
I am just getting started with eJabberd and am writing a custom module with HTTP access.
I have the request going through, but am now trying to retrieve a custom header and that's where I'm having problems.
I've used the Request record to get the request_headers list and can see that it contains all of the headers I need (although the one I'm after is a binary string on both the key and value for some reason...) as follows:
[
{ 'Content-Length', <<"100">> },
{ <<"X-Custom-Header">>, <<"CustomValue">> },
{ 'Host', <<"127.0.0.1:5280">> },
{ 'Content-Type', <<"application/json">> },
{ 'User-Agent', <<"Fiddler">> }
]
This is also my first foray into functional programming, so from procedural perspective, I would loop through the list and check if the key is the one that I'm looking for and return the value.
To this end, I've created a function as:
find_header(HeaderKey, Headers) ->
lists:foreach(
fun(H) ->
if
H = {HeaderKey, Value} -> H;
true -> false
end
end,
Headers).
With this I get the error:
illegal guard expression
I'm not even sure I'm going about this the right way so am looking for some advice as to how to handle this sort of scenario in Erlang (and possibly in functional languages in general).
Thanks in advance for any help and advice!
PhilHalf
The List that you have mentioned is called a "Property list", which is an ordinary list containing entries in the form of either tuples, whose first elements are keys used for lookup and insertion or atoms, which work as shorthand for tuples {Atom, true}.
To get a value of key, you may do the following:
proplists:get_value(Key,List).
for Example to get the Content Length:
7> List=[{'Content-Length',<<"100">>},
{<<"X-Custom-Header">>,<<"CustomValue">>},
{'Host',<<"127.0.0.1:5280">>},
{'Content-Type',<<"application/json">>},
{'User-Agent',<<"Fiddler">>}].
7> proplists:get_value('Content-Type',List).
<<"application/json">>
You can use the function lists:keyfind/3:
> {_, Value} = lists:keyfind('Content-Length', 1, Headers).
{'Content-Length',<<"100">>}
> Value.
<<"100">>
The 1 in the second argument tells the function what tuple element to compare. If, for example, you wanted to know what key corresponds to a value you already know, you'd use 2 instead:
> {Key, _} = lists:keyfind(<<"100">>, 2, Headers).
{'Content-Length',<<"100">>}
> Key.
'Content-Length'
As for how to implement this in Erlang, you'd write a recursive function.
Imagine that you're looking at the first element of the list, trying to figure out if this is the entry you're looking for. There are three possibilities:
The list is empty, so there is nothing to compare.
The first entry matches. Return it and ignore the rest of the list.
The first entry doesn't match. Therefore, the result of looking for this key in this list is the same as the result of looking for it in the remaining elements: we recurse.
find_header(_HeaderKey, []) ->
not_found;
find_header(HeaderKey, [{HeaderKey, Value} | _Rest]) ->
{ok, Value};
find_header(HeaderKey, [{_Key, _Value} | Rest]) ->
find_header(HeaderKey, Rest).
Hope this helps.
I have been busy with a sudoku solver in Erlang yesterday and today. The working functionality I have now is that I can check if a sudoku in the form of a list, e.g.,
[6,7,1,8,2,3,4,9,5,5,4,9,1,7,6,3,2,8,3,2,8,5,4,9,1,6,7,1,3,2,6,5,7,8,4,9,9,8,6,4,1,2,5,7,3,4,5,7,3,9,8,6,1,2,8,9,3,2,6,4,7,5,1,7,1,4,9,3,5,2,8,6,2,6,5,7,8,1,9,3,4].
is valid or not by looking at the constraints (no duplicates in squares, rows, and columns).
This function is called valid(S) which takes a sudoku S and returns true if it is a valid sudoku and false if it is not. The function ignores 0's, which are used to represent empty values. This is an example of the same sudoku with some random empty values:
[0,7,1,8,2,3,4,0,5,5,4,9,0,7,6,3,2,8,3,0,8,5,0,9,1,6,7,1,3,2,6,5,7,8,4,9,0,8,6,4,1,2,5,7,0,4,5,7,3,9,8,6,1,0,8,9,3,2,6,4,7,5,1,7,1,4,9,3,0,2,8,6,2,6,5,7,8,1,9,3,4].
The next step is to find the first 0 in the list, and try a value from 1 to 9 and check if it produces a valid sudoku. If it does we can continue to the next 0 and try values there and see if it is valid or not. Once we cannot go further we go back to the previous 0 and try the next values et cetera until we end up with a solved sudoku.
The code I have so far looks like this (based on someone who got it almost working):
solve(First,Nom,[_|Last]) -> try_values({First,Nom,Last},pos()).
try_values(_,[]) -> {error, "No solution found"};
try_values({First,Nom,Last},[N|Pos]) ->
case valid(First++[N]++Last) of
true ->
case solve({First++[N]},Nom,Last) of
{ok,_} -> {ok, "Result"};
{error,_} -> try_values({First,N,Last},Pos)
end;
false -> try_values({First,N,Last},Pos)
end.
pos() is a list consisting of the values from 1 to 9. The idea is that we enter an empty list for First and a Sudoku list for [_|Last] in which we look for a 0 (Nom?). Then we try a value and if the list that results is valid according to our function we continue till we fail the position or have a result. When we fail we return a new try_values with remaining (Pos) values of our possibitilies.
Naturally, this does not work and returns:
5> sudoku:solve([],0,S).
** exception error: bad argument
in operator ++/2
called as {[6]}
++
[1,1,8,2,3,4,0,5,5,4,9,0,7,6,3,2,8,3,2,8,5,4,9,1,6,7,1,3,2|...]
in call from sudoku:try_values/2 (sudoku.erl, line 140)
in call from sudoku:try_values/2 (sudoku.erl, line 142)
With my inexperience I cannot grasp what I need to do to make the code logical and working. I would really appreciate it if someone with more experience could give me some pointers.
try_values([], []) -> error("No solution found");
try_values([Solution], []) -> Solution;
try_values(_, []) -> error("Bad sudoku: multiple solutions");
try_values(Heads, [0|Tail]) ->
NewHeads = case Heads of
[] -> [[P] || P <- pos()];
_ -> [Head++[P] || P <- pos(), Head <- Heads]
end,
ValidHeads = [Head || Head <- NewHeads, valid(Head++Tail)],
try_values(ValidHeads, Tail);
try_values([], [H|Tail]) -> try_values([[H]], Tail);
try_values(Heads, [H|Tail]) -> try_values([Head++[H] || Head <- Heads], Tail).
solve(Board) ->
case valid(Board) of
true -> try_values([], Board);
false -> error("No solution found")
end.
try_values does what you described. It builds solution by going through Board, trying all possible solutions (from pos()) when it finds 0 and collecting valid solutions in ValidHeads to pass them further to continue. Thus, it goes all possible ways, if at some point there are multiple valid sudoku they all will be added to Heads and will be tested on validity on following steps. solve is just a wrapper to call try_values([], Board).
Basically, the way to iterate recursively over 0's is to skip all non-zeros (2 last try_values expression) and do the job on zeros (fourth try_values expression).
First three try_values expressions check if solution is exist and single and return it in that case.
I have an Ocaml function that is giving me errors.
What I am trying to do:
Recursively create a List of random numbers (0-2) of size "limit".
Here's what I have:
let rec carDoorNumbers = fun limit ->
match limit with
| [1] -> Random.int 3
| [] -> Random.int 3 :: carDoorNumbers (limit-1);;
I am getting this error:
Error: This expression has type 'a list
but an expression was expected of type int
Think about what your function has to do: given a limit, you have to create a list of numbers. So your type is something like carDoorNumbers : int -> int list.
Looking at that, it seems you have two errors. First, you're matching limit (which should be an int) against a list pattern. [1] -> ... matches a list containing only the element 1 and [] matches the empty list; you really want to match against the number 1 and any other number n.
The second error is that you return two different types in your match statement. Remember that you are supposed to be returning a list. In the first case, you are returning Random.int 3, which is an int rather than an int list. What you really want to return here is something like [Random.int 3].
The error you got is a little confusing. Since the first thing you returned was an int, it expects your second thing to also be an int. However, your second case was actually correct: you do return an int list! However, the compiler does not know what you meant, so its error is backwards; rather than changing the int list to an int, you need to change the int to an int list.
Your match expression treats limit like a list. Both [1] and [] are lists. That's what the compiler is telling you. But it seems limit should be an integer.
To match an integer, just use an integer constant. No square brackets.
(As a side comment, you might want to be sure the function works well when you pass it 0.)