I want to make a function to get the N-th first element of a list.
For example :
>>(firsts 3 '(a b c d e))
return : (a b c)
I made that :
(define (firsts number lst)
(let ((maliste '()))
(if (equal? 0 number)
maliste
(and (set! maliste (cons (car lst) maliste)) (firsts (- number 1) (cdr lst))))))
But it doesn't work, I think I should use a let but I don't know how.
Thanks .
It's a lot simpler, remember - you should try to think functionally. In Lisp, using set! (or other operations that mutate state) is discouraged, a recursive solution is the natural approach. Assuming that the list has enough elements, this should work:
(define (firsts number lst)
; as an exercise: add an extra condition for handling the
; case when the list is empty before the number is zero
(if (equal? 0 number)
'()
(cons (car lst)
(firsts (- number 1) (cdr lst)))))
Related
I'm stuck on a homework question and could use any hints or suggestions. I need to find the n largest numbers in a list using Scheme. I am trying to do this by creating helper functions that are called by the main function. So far I have this:
(define (get_max_value L)
(if (null? L)
'()
(apply max L)
)
(define (biggest_nums L n)
(if (null? n)
'()
(cons (get_max_value L) (biggest_nums L (- n 1)))
)
)
When I type (biggest_num '(3 1 4 2 5) 3) at the command prompt drRacket just hangs and doesn't even return an error message. Where am I going wrong?
The simplest solution is to first sort the numbers in ascending order and then take the n first. This translates quite literally in Racket code:
(define (biggest_nums L n)
(take (sort L >) n))
It works as expected:
(biggest_nums '(3 1 4 2 5) 3)
=> '(5 4 3)
Two mains problems with your code:
L always stays the same. L doesn't decrease in size when you make the recursive call, so the max will always be the same number in every recursive call.
You don't ever check n to make sure it contains the correct amount of numbers before returning the answer.
To solve these two problems in the most trivial way possible, you can put a (< n 1) condition in the if, and use something like (cdr L) to make L decrease in size in each recursive call by removing an element each time.
(define (biggest-nums n L)
(if (or (empty? L)
(< n 1))
'()
(cons (apply max L) (biggest-nums (- n 1) (cdr L)))))
So when we run it:
> (biggest-nums 3 '(1 59 2 10 33 4 5))
What should the output be?
'(59 33 10)
What is the actual output?
'(59 59 33)
OK, so we got your code running, but there are still some issues with it. Do you know why that's happening? Can you step through the code to figure out what you could do to fix it?
Just sort the list and then return the first n elements.
However, if the list is very long and n is not very large, then you probably don't want to sort the whole list first. In that case, I would suggest something like this:
(define insert-sorted
(lambda (item lst)
(cond ((null? lst)
(list item))
((<= item (car lst))
(cons item lst))
(else
(cons (car lst) (insert-sorted item (cdr lst)))))))
(define largest-n
(lambda (count lst)
(if (<= (length lst) count)
lst
(let loop ((todo (cdr lst))
(result (list (car lst))))
(if (null? todo)
result
(let* ((item (car todo))
(new-result
(if (< (car result) item)
(let ((new-result (insert-sorted item result)))
(if (< count (length new-result))
(cdr new-result)
new-result))
result)))
(loop (cdr todo)
new-result)))))))
For my programming languages class I'm supposed to write a function in Scheme to reverse a list without using the pre-made reverse function. So far what I got was
(define (reverseList lst)
(COND
((NULL? lst) '())
(ELSE (CONS (reverseList(CDR lst)) (CAR lst)))
))
The problem I'm having is that if I input a list, lets say (a b c) it gives me (((() . c) . b) . a).
How am I supposed to get a clean list without multiple sets of parenthesis and the .'s?
The problem with your implementation is that cons isn't receiving a list as its second parameter, so the answer you're building isn't a proper list, remember: a proper list is constructed by consing an element with a list, and the last list is empty.
One possible workaround for this is to use a helper function that builds the answer in an accumulator parameter, consing the elements in reverse - incidentally, this solution is tail recursive:
(define (reverse lst)
(reverse-helper lst '()))
(define (reverse-helper lst acc)
(if (null? lst)
acc
(reverse-helper (cdr lst) (cons (car lst) acc))))
(reverse '(1 2 3 4 5))
=> '(5 4 3 2 1)
You are half way there. The order of the elements in your result is correct, only the structure needs fixing.
What you want is to perform this transformation:
(((() . c) . b) . a) ; input
--------------------
(((() . c) . b) . a) () ; trans-
((() . c) . b) (a) ; for-
(() . c) (b a) ; mation
() (c b a) ; steps
--------------------
(c b a) ; result
This is easy to code. The car and cdr of the interim value are immediately available to us. At each step, the next interim-result is constructed by (cons (cdr interim-value) interim-result), and interim-result starts up as an empty list, because this is what we construct here - a list:
(define (transform-rev input)
(let step ( (interim-value input) ; initial set-up of
(interim-result '() ) ) ; the two loop variables
(if (null? interim-value)
interim-result ; return it in the end, or else
(step (car interim-value) ; go on with the next interim value
(cons ; and the next interim result
(... what goes here? ...)
interim-result )))))
interim-result serves as an accumulator. This is what's known as "accumulator technique". step represents a loop's step coded with "named-let" syntax.
So overall reverse is
(define (my-reverse lst)
(transform-rev
(reverseList lst)))
Can you tweak transform-rev so that it is able to accept the original list as an input, and thus skip the reverseList call? You only need to change the data-access parts, i.e. how you get the next interim value, and what you add into the interim result.
(define (my-reverse L)
(fold cons '() L)) ;;left fold
Step through the list and keep appending the car of the list to the recursive call.
(define (reverseList lst)
(COND
((NULL? lst) '())
(ELSE (APPEND (reverseList(CDR lst)) (LIST (CAR lst))))
))
Instead of using cons, try append
(define (reverseList lst)
(if (null? lst)
'()
(append (reverseList (cdr lst)) (list (car lst)) )
)
)
a sample run would be:
1]=> (reverseList '(a b c 1 2 + -))
>>> (- + 2 1 c b a)
car will give you just one symbol but cdr a list
Always make sure that you provide append with two lists.
If you don't give two lists to the cons it will give you dotted pair (a . b) rather than a list.
See Pairs and Lists for more information.
I want to test if a list is even, in . Like (evenatom '((h i) (j k) l (m n o)) should reply #t because it has 4 elements.
From Google, I found how to check for odd:
(define (oddatom lst)
(cond
((null? lst) #f)
((not (pair? lst)) #t)
(else (not (eq? (oddatom (car lst)) (oddatom (cdr lst)))))))
to make it even, would I just swap the car with a cdr and cdr with car?
I'm new to Scheme and just trying to get the basics.
No, swapping the car and cdr won't work. But you can swap the #f and #t.
Also, while the list you gave has 4 elements, what the function does is actually traverse into sublists and count the atoms, so you're really looking at 8 atoms.
You found odd atom using 'Google' and need even atom. How about:
(define (evenatom obj) (not (oddatom obj)))
or, adding some sophistication,
(define (complement pred)
(lambda (obj) (not (pred obj))))
and then
(define evenatom (complement oddatom))
you are mixing a procedure to check if a list has even numbers of elements (not restricted to atoms) and a procedure that checks if there are an even number of atomic elements in the list structure. Example: ((a b) (c d e) f) has an odd number of elements (3) but an even number (6) of atoms.
If you had some marbles, how would you determine if you had an odd or even number of marbles? you could just count them as normal and check the end sum for evenness or count 1,0,1,0 or odd,even,odd,even so that you really didn't know how many marbles I had in the end, only if it's odd or even. Lets do both:
(define (even-elements-by-count x)
(even? (length x)))
(define (even-elements-by-boolean x)
(let loop ((x x)(even #t))
(if (null? x)
even
(loop (cdr x) (not even)))))
now imagine that you had some cups in addition and that they had marbles to and you wondered the same. You'd need to count the elements on the floor and the elements in cups and perhaps there was a cup in a cup with elements as well. For this you should look at How to count atoms in a list structure and use the first approach or modify one of them to update evenness instead of counting.
The equivalent of the procedure you link to, for an even number of atoms, is
(define (evenatom lst)
(cond
((null? lst) #t)
((not (pair? lst)) #f)
(else (eq? (evenatom (car lst)) (evenatom (cdr lst))))))
You need to swap #t and #f, as well as leave out the not clause of the last line.
Write a procedure (first-half lst) that returns a list with the first half of its elements. If the length of the given list is odd, the returned list should have (length - 1) / 2 elements.
I am given these program as a example and as I am new to Scheme I need your help in solving this problem.
(define list-head
(lambda (lst k)
(if (= k 0)
'()
(cons (car lst)(list-head (cdr lst)(- k 1)))))))
(list-head '(0 1 2 3 4) 3)
; list the first 3 element in the list (list 0 1 2)
Also the expected output for the program I want is :
(first-half '(43 23 14 5 9 57 0 125))
(43 23 14 5)
This is pretty simple to implement in terms of existing procedures, check your interpreter's documentation for the availability of the take procedure:
(define (first-half lst)
(take lst (quotient (length lst) 2)))
Apart from that, the code provided in the question is basically reinventing take, and it looks correct. The only detail left to implement would be, how to obtain the half of the lists' length? same as above, just use the quotient procedure:
(define (first-half lst)
(list-head lst (quotient (length lst) 2)))
It looks like you are learning about recursion? One recursive approach is to walk the list with a 'slow' and 'fast' pointer; when the fast pointer reaches the end you are done; use the slow pointer to grow the result. Like this:
(define (half list)
(let halving ((rslt '()) (slow list) (fast list))
(if (or (null? fast) (null? (cdr fast)))
(reverse rslt)
(halving (cons (car slow) rslt)
(cdr slow)
(cdr (cdr fast))))))
Another way to approach it is to have a function that divides the list at a specific index, and then a wrapper to calculate floor(length/2):
(define (cleave_at n a)
(cond
((null? a) '())
((zero? n) (list '() a))
(#t
((lambda (x)
(cons (cons (car a) (car x)) (cdr x)))
(cleave_at (- n 1) (cdr a))))))
(define (first-half a)
(car (cleave_at (floor (/ (length a) 2)) a)))
Hey guys, I'm using MIT Scheme and trying to write a procedure to find the average of all the numbers in a bunch of nested lists, for example:
(average-lists (list 1 2 (list 3 (list 4 5)) 6)))
Should return 3.5. I've played with the following code for days, and right now I've got it returning the sum, but not the average. Also, it is important that the values of the inner-most lists are calculated first, so no extracting all values and simply averaging them.
Here's what I have so far:
(define (average-lists data)
(if (null? data)
0.0
(if (list? (car data))
(+ (average-lists (car data)) (average-lists (cdr data)))
(+ (car data) (average-lists (cdr data))))))
I've tried this approach, as well as trying to use map to map a lambda function to it recursively, and a few others, but I just can't find one. I think I'm making thing harder than it should be.
I wrote the following in an effort to pursue some other paths as well, which you may find useful:
(define (list-num? x) ;Checks to see if list only contains numbers
(= (length (filter number? x)) (length x)))
(define (list-avg x) ;Returns the average of a list of numbers
(/ (accumulate + 0 x) (length x)))
Your help is really appreciated! This problem has been a nightmare for me. :)
Unless the parameters require otherwise, you'll want to define a helper procedure that can calculate both the sum and the count of how many items are in each list. Once you can average a single list, it's easy to adapt it to nested lists by checking to see if the car is a list.
This method will get you the average in one pass over the list, rather than the two or more passes that solutions that flatten the list or do the count and the sums in two separate passes. You would have to get the sum and counts separately from the sublists to get the overall average, though (re. zinglon's comment below).
Edit:
One way to get both the sum and the count back is to pass it back in a pair:
(define sum-and-count ; returns (sum . count)
(lambda (ls)
(if (null? ls)
(cons 0 0)
(let ((r (sum-and-count (cdr ls))))
(cons (+ (car ls) (car r))
(add1 (cdr r)))))))
That procedure gets the sum and number of elements of a list. Do what you did to your own average-lists to it to get it to examine deeply-nested lists. Then you can get the average by doing (/ (car result) (cdr result)).
Or, you can write separate deep-sum and deep-count procedures, and then do (/ (deep-sum ls) (deep-count ls)), but that requires two passes over the list.
(define (flatten mylist)
(cond ((null? mylist) '())
((list? (car mylist)) (append (flatten (car mylist)) (flatten (cdr mylist))))
(else (cons (car mylist) (flatten (cdr mylist))))))
(define (myavg mylist)
(let ((flatlist (flatten mylist)))
(/ (apply + flatlist) (length flatlist))))
The first function flattens the list. That is, it converts '(1 2 (3 (4 5)) 6) to '(1 2 3 4 5 6)
Then its just a matter of applying + to the flat list and doing the average.
Reference for the first function:
http://www.dreamincode.net/code/snippet3229.htm