I recently started with F# and implemented a very basic recursive function that represents the Sieve of Eratosthenes. I came up with the following, working code:
static member internal SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive sequence accumulator =
match sequence with
| [] -> accumulator
| head::tail -> let rest = tail |> List.filter(fun number -> number % head <> 0L)
let newAccumulator = head::accumulator
Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive rest newAccumulator
This function is not really memory efficient so I tried to eliminate the variables "rest" and "newAccumulator". I came up with the following code
static member internal SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive sequence accumulator =
match sequence with
| [] -> accumulator
| head::tail -> tail |> List.filter(fun number -> number % head <> 0L)
|> Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive (head::accumulator)
As far as I understand the tutorials I've read Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive will be called with the filtered tail as first parameter and a list consisting of head::accumulator as second one. However when I try to run the code with the reduced variable usage, the program gets trappen in an infinite loop. Why is this happening and what did I do wrong?
As far as I understand the tutorials I've read Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive will be called with the filtered tail as first parameter and a list consisting of head::accumulator as second one.
You have this backwards.
In the first version, you're passing rest then newAccumulator; in the second version, you're effectively passing newAccumulator then rest. I.e., you've transposed the arguments.
Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive (head::accumulator) is a partial function application wherein you're applying (head::accumulator) as the first argument (sequence). This partial function application yields a unary function (expecting accumulator), to which you are passing (via |>) what is called rest in the first version of your code.
Changing SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive's argument order is the easiest solution, but I would consider something like the following idiomatic as well:
static member internal SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive sequence accumulator =
match sequence with
| [] -> accumulator
| head::tail ->
tail
|> List.filter(fun number -> number % head <> 0L)
|> Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive <| (head::accumulator)
or
static member internal SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive sequence accumulator =
let inline flipzip a b = b, a
match sequence with
| [] -> accumulator
| head::tail ->
tail
|> List.filter(fun number -> number % head <> 0L)
|> flipzip (head::accumulator)
||> Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive
FWIW, eliminating rest and newAccumulator as named variables here is not going to impact your memory usage in the slightest.
The last call in your second function is equivalent to:
Prime.SieveOfEratosthenesRecursive newAccumulator rest
where you switch positions of two params. Since newAccumulator grows bigger after each recursive call, you will never reach the base case of empty list.
The rule of thumb is putting the most frequently changing parameter at last:
let rec sieve acc xs =
match xs with
| [] -> acc
| x::xs' -> xs' |> List.filter (fun y -> y % x <> 0L)
|> sieve (x::acc)
The above function could be shortened using function keyword:
let rec sieve acc = function
| [] -> acc
| x::xs' -> xs' |> List.filter (fun y -> y % x <> 0L)
|> sieve (x::acc)
Using pipe (|>) operator only makes the function more readable, it doesn't affect memory usage at all.
Related
I have the following function in OCaml:
let get_all_parents lst =
List.map (fun (name,opt) -> opt) lst
That maps my big list with (name, opt) to just a list of opt. An option can contain of either None or Some value which in this case is a string. I want a list of strings with all my values.
I am a beginner learning OCaml.
I don't think filter and map used together is a good solution to this problem. This is because when you apply map to convert your string option to string, you will have the None case to deal with. Even if you know that you won't have any Nones because you filtered them away, the type checker doesn't, and can't help you. If you have non-exhaustive pattern match warnings enabled, you will get them, or you will have to supply some kind of dummy string for the None case. And, you will have to hope you don't introduce errors when refactoring later, or else write test cases or do more code review.
Instead, you need a function filter_map : ('a -> 'b option) -> 'a list -> 'b list. The idea is that this works like map, except filter_map f lst drops each element of lst for which f evaluates to None. If f evaluates to Some v, the result list will have v. You could then use filter_map like so:
filter_map (fun (_, opt) -> opt) lst
You could also write that as
filter_map snd lst
A more general example would be:
filter_map (fun (_, opt) ->
match opt with
| Some s -> Some (s ^ "\n")
| None -> None)
lst
filter_map can be implemented like this:
let filter_map f lst =
let rec loop acc = function
| [] -> List.rev acc
| v::lst' ->
match f v with
| None -> loop acc lst'
| Some v' -> loop (v'::acc) lst'
in
loop [] lst
EDIT For greater completeness, you could also do
let filter_map f lst =
List.fold_left (fun acc v ->
match f v with
| Some v' -> v'::acc
| None -> acc) [] lst
|> List.rev
It's a shame that this kind of function isn't in the standard library. It's present in both Batteries Included and Jane Street Core.
I'm going to expand on #Carsten's answer. He is pointing you the right direction.
It's not clear what question you're asking. For example, I'm not sure why you're telling us about your function get_all_parents. Possibly this function was your attempt to get the answer you want, and that it's not quite working for you. Or maybe you're happy with this function, but you want to do some further processing on its results?
Either way, List.map can't do the whole job because it always returns a list of the same length as its input. But you need a list that can be different lengths, depending on how many None values there are in the big list.
So you need a function that can extract only the parts of a list that you're interested in. As #Carsten says, the key function for this is List.filter.
Some combination of map and filter will definitely do what you want. Or you can just use fold, which has the power of both map and filter. Or you can write your own recursive function that does all the work.
Update
Maybe your problem is in extracting the string from a string option. The "nice" way to do this is to provide a default value to use when the option is None:
let get default xo =
match xo with
| None -> default
| Some x -> x
# get "none" (Some "abc");;
- : string = "abc"
# get "none" None;;
- : string = "none"
#
type opt = Some of string | None
List.fold_left (fun lres -> function
(name,Some value) -> value::lres
| (name,None) -> lres
) [] [("s1",None);("s2",Some "s2bis")]
result:
- : string list = ["s2bis"]
I want to print out the column of a matrix but i keep getting an error.
Error: This expression has type 'a list but an expression was expected of type int
let rec get_column2 mat x = match mat with
| [] -> raise (Failure "empty list")
| h::t -> if x = 1 then h else get_column2 t (x-1);;
let rec get_column mat x= match mat with
| [] -> raise (Failure "empty list")
| []::tv -> get_column tv x
| hv::tv -> get_column2 hv x::get_column tv x;;
Matrix example [[2;5;6];[3;5;3][3;6;8]]
The first part works fine on type int list so I added the second part to go through the int list list and cut them into int list's and then tryed to get the columns of each separately.
I also tryed it this way:
let rec get_column mat x =
let rec column matr y =
if matr = [] then raise (Failure "empty list") else
if y = 1 then List.hd matr else
column (List.tl matr) y-1;
in column (List.hd mat) x :: get_column (List.tl mat) x;;
The second example translates fine but then doesn't work. I get an Exception "tl". (I'm not sure the function nesting is done right since I'm just learning Ocaml).
get_column2 - your first function, works as it should. That is it will fetch the value of each row in the matrix. It's a good helper function for you to extract the value from a list.
Your second function get_column gets all the types right, and you're accumulating everything, except that instead of stopping when you have an empty list [] you end up throwing an exception. That is your matrix example will go through just nicely, until it has no more lists to go through, then it will always throw the exception. (because the recursion keeps going till it's an empty list, and Ocaml will do as you told it too, fail when it gets an empty list.
The only thing you were missing was the exception, instead of throwing an exception, just return an empty list. That way your recursion will go all the way and accumulate till it's an empty list, and at the final step where the matrix is empty, it will append the empty list to the result, and you're golden.
So your code should be:
let rec get_column2 mat x = match mat with
| [] -> raise (Failure "empty list")
| h::t -> if x = 1 then h else get_column2 t (x-1)
let rec get_column mat x= match mat with
| [] -> [] (*doesn't throw an exception here*)
| []::tv -> get_column tv x
| hv::tv -> (get_column2 hv x)::get_column tv x
Instead of throwing the exception when it's an empty list, maybe you could check if the value of x is more than the length of the inner list.
Also, here's my implementation of doing it. It's still fairly basic as it doesn't use List.iter which everyone loves, but it doesn't rely on any additional packages. It makes use of nested functions so you don't expose them everywhere and pollute the namespace.
(*mat is a list of int list*)
let get_col mat x =
let rec helper rows x = (*helper function that gets the value at x*)
match rows with
| [] -> raise (Failure "empty list")
| h::t -> if x = 1 then h else helper t (x-1)
in
let rec wrapper mat= (*function that walks through all the rows*)
match mat with
| [] -> []
| rows::tl -> (helper rows x)::(wrapper tl) (*keep accumulating value*)
in wrapper mat
How you can visualize the [] -> [] part is that when the recursion is at it's final stage (mat is reduced to an empty list), the wrapper function returns the empty list, which will be appended to the recursion stack (since we are accumulating the values in a list as per (helper rows x)::(wrapper tl)), and the recursion will complete.
You don't hit this error with your get_column2 as you tell ocaml to stop recursing and return a value when x=1.
Edit, Additional:
As Jeffrey mentioned, a much more elegant way of handling the error is adding the case for [row], where row is the last row in the matrix. You just return (helper row x) there. And you could have the empty matrix as a failure.
Example using your code:
let rec get_column mat x= match mat with
| [] -> raise (Failure "empty list") (*fail here, as we don't want to compute a matrix with no rows.*)
| [tv] -> get_column tv x (*just return the value*)
| hv::tv -> (get_column2 hv x)::get_column tv x
When I try your first example, I don't get a type error. When I run it, I get the "empty list" failure. So your description of your problem seems wrong.
If you want to treat an empty matrix as an error, you must be very careful to handle a 1 x n matrix as your base case. I don't see that in your code.
Idiomatic F# can nicely represent the classic recursive expression data structure:
type Expression =
| Number of int
| Add of Expression * Expression
| Multiply of Expression * Expression
| Variable of string
together with recursive functions thereon:
let rec simplify_add (exp: Expression): Expression =
match exp with
| Add (x, Number 0) -> x
| Add (Number 0, x) -> x
| _ -> exp
... oops, that doesn't work as written; simplify_add needs to recur into subexpressions. In this toy example that's easy enough to do, only a couple of extra lines of code, but in a real program there would be dozens of expression types; one would prefer to avoid adding dozens of lines of boilerplate to every function that operates on expressions.
Is there any way to express 'by default, recur on subexpressions'? Something like:
let rec simplify_add (exp: Expression): Expression =
match exp with
| Add (x, Number 0) -> x
| Add (Number 0, x) -> x
| _ -> recur simplify_add exp
where recur might perhaps be some sort of higher-order function that uses reflection to look up the type definition or somesuch?
Unfortunately, F# does not give you any recursive function for processing your data type "for free". You could probably generate one using reflection - this would be valid if you have a lot of recursive types, but it might not be worth it in normal situations.
There are various patterns that you can use to hide the repetition though. One that I find particularly nice is based on the ExprShape module from standard F# libraries. The idea is to define an active pattern that gives you a view of your type as either leaf (with no nested sub-expressions) or node (with a list of sub-expressions):
type ShapeInfo = Shape of Expression
// View expression as a node or leaf. The 'Shape' just stores
// the original expression to keep its original structure
let (|Leaf|Node|) e =
match e with
| Number n -> Leaf(Shape e)
| Add(e1, e2) -> Node(Shape e, [e1; e2])
| Multiply(e1, e2) -> Node(Shape e, [e1; e2])
| Variable s -> Leaf(Shape e)
// Reconstruct an expression from shape, using new list
// of sub-expressions in the node case.
let FromLeaf(Shape e) = e
let FromNode(Shape e, args) =
match e, args with
| Add(_, _), [e1; e2] -> Add(e1, e2)
| Multiply(_, _), [e1; e2] -> Multiply(e1, e2)
| _ -> failwith "Wrong format"
This is some boilerplate code that you'd have to write. But the nice thing is that we can now write the recursive simplifyAdd function using just your special cases and two additional patterns for leaf and node:
let rec simplifyAdd exp =
match exp with
// Special cases for this particular function
| Add (x, Number 0) -> x
| Add (Number 0, x) -> x
// This now captures all other recursive/leaf cases
| Node (n, exps) -> FromNode(n, List.map simplifyAdd exps)
| Leaf _ -> exp
I have the following excercise to do:
Code a function that will be a summation of a list of functions.
So I think that means that if a function get list of functions [f(x);g(x);h(x);...] it must return a function that is f(x)+g(x)+h(x)+...
I'm trying to do code that up for the general case and here's something I came up with:
let f_sum (h::t) = fold_left (fun a h -> (fun x -> (h x) + (a x))) h t;;
The problem is I'm using "+" operator and that means it works only when in list we have functions of type
'a -> int
So, can it be done more "generally", I mean can we write a function, that is a sum of ('a -> 'b) functions, given in a list?
yes, you can make plus function to be a parameter of your function, like
let f_sum plus fs =
let (+) = plus in
match fs with
| [] -> invalid_arg "f_sum: empty list"
| f :: fs -> fold_left ...
You can generalize even more, and ask a user to provide a zero value, so that you can return a function, returning zero if the list is empty. Also you can use records to group functions, or even first class modules (cf., Commutative_group.S in Core library).
I'm currently generating a sequence in a similar way to:
migrators
|> Seq.map (fun m -> m())
The migrator function is ultimately returning a discriminated union like:
type MigratorResult =
| Success of string * TimeSpan
| Error of string * Exception
I want to stop the map once I encounter my first Error but I need to include the Error in the final sequence.
I have something like the following to display a final message to the user
match results |> List.rev with
| [] -> "No results equals no migrators"
| head :: _ ->
match head with
| Success (dt, t) -> "All migrators succeeded"
| Error (dt, ex) -> "Migration halted owing to error"
So I need:
A way to stop the mapping when one of the map steps produces an Error
A way to have that error be the final element added to the sequence
I appreciate there may be a different sequence method other than map that will do this, I'm new to F# and searching online hasn't yielded anything as yet!
I guess there are multiple approaches here, but one way would be to use unfold:
migrators
|> Seq.unfold (fun ms ->
match ms with
| m :: tl ->
match m () with
| Success res -> Some (Success res, tl)
| Error res -> Some (Error res, [])
| [] -> None)
|> List.ofSeq
Note the List.ofSeq at the end, that's just there for realizing the sequence. A different way to go would be to use sequence comprehensions, some might say it results in a clearer code.
The ugly things Tomaš alludes to are 1) mutable state, and 2) manipulation of the underlying enumerator. A higher-order function which returns up to and including when the predicate holds would then look like this:
module Seq =
let takeUntil pred (xs : _ seq) = seq{
use en = xs.GetEnumerator()
let flag = ref true
while !flag && en.MoveNext() do
flag := not <| pred en.Current
yield en.Current }
seq{1..10} |> Seq.takeUntil (fun x -> x % 5 = 0)
|> Seq.toList
// val it : int list = [1; 2; 3; 4; 5]
For your specific application, you'd map the cases of the DU to a boolean.
(migrators : seq<MigratorResult>)
|> Seq.takeUntil (function Success _ -> false | Error _ -> true)
I think the answer from #scrwtp is probably the nicest way to do this if your input is reasonably small (and you can turn it into an F# list to use pattern matching). I'll add one more version, which works when your input is just a sequence and you do not want to turn it into a list.
Essentially, you want to do something that's almost like Seq.takeWhile, but it gives you one additional item at the end (the one, for which the predicate fails).
To use a simpler example, the following returns all numbers from a sequence until one that is divisible by 5:
let nums = [ 2 .. 10 ]
nums
|> Seq.map (fun m -> m % 5)
|> Seq.takeWhile (fun n -> n <> 0)
So, you basically just need to look one element ahead - to do this, you could use Seq.pairwise which gives you the current and the next element in the sequence"
nums
|> Seq.map (fun m -> m % 5)
|> Seq.pairwise // Get sequence of pairs with the next value
|> Seq.takeWhile (fun (p, n) -> p <> 0) // Look at the next value for test
|> Seq.mapi (fun i (p, n) -> // For the first item, we return both
if i = 0 then [p;n] else [n]) // for all other, we return the second
|> Seq.concat
The only ugly thing here is that you then need to flatten the sequence again using mapi and concat.
This is not very nice, so a good thing to do would be to define your own higher-order function like Seq.takeUntilAfter that encapsulates the behavior you need (and hides all the ugly things). Then your code could just use the function and look nice & readable (and you can experiment with other ways of implementing this).