how to delete third element in a list using scheme - scheme

Question

This is what I want:
(delete-third1 '(3 7 5)) ==> (3 7)
(delete-third1 '(a b c d)) ==> (a b d)
so I did something like:
(define (delete-third1 LS ) (list(cdr LS)))
which returns
(delete-third1 '(3 7 5))
((7 5))
when it should be (3 7). What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Think about what cdr is doing. cdr says that "given a list, chop off the first value and return the rest of the list". So it's removing only the first value, then returning you the rest of that list (which is exactly what you are seeing). Since it returns a list, you don't need a list (cdr LS) there either.
What you want is something like this:
(define (delete-n l n)
(if (= n 0)
(cdr l)
(append (list (car l)) (delete-n (cdr l) (- n 1)))))
(define (delete-third l)
(delete-n l 2))
So how does this work? delete-n will delete the nth element of a list by keeping a running count of what element we are up to. If we're not up to the nth element, then add that element to the list. If we are, then skip that element and add the rest of the elements to our list.
Then we simply define delete-third as delete-n where it removes the 3rd element (which is element 2 when we start counting at 0).

Answer 2

The simplest way would be: cons the first element, the second element and the rest of the list starting from the fourth position. Because this looks like homework I'll only give you the general idea, so you can fill-in the blanks:
(define (delete-third1 lst)
(cons <???> ; first element of the list
(cons <???> ; second element of the list
<???>))) ; rest of the list starting from the fourth element
The above assumes that the list has at least three elements. If that's not always the case, validate first the size of the list and return an appropriate value for that case.
A couple more of hints: in Racket there's a direct procedure for accessing the first element of a list. And another for accessing the second element. Finally, you can always use a sequence of cdrs to reach the rest of the rest of the ... list (but even that can be written more compactly)
From a practical standpoint, and if this weren't a homework, you could implement this functionality easily in terms of other existing procedures, and even make it general enough to remove elements at any given position. For example, for removing the third element (and again assuming there are enough elements in the list):
(append (take lst 2) (drop lst 3))
Or as a general procedure for removing an element from a given 0-based index:
(define (remove-ref lst idx)
(append (take lst idx) (drop lst (add1 idx))))
Here's how we would remove the third element:
(remove-ref '(3 7 5) 2)
=> '(3 7)

Answer 3

This works:
(define (delete-third! l)
(unless (or (null? l)
(null? (cdr l))
(null? (cddr l)))
(set-cdr! (cdr l) (cdddr l)))
l)
if you want a version that does not modify the list:
(define (delete-third l)
(if (not (or (null? l)
(null? (cdr l))
(null? (cddr l))))
(cons (car l) (cons (cadr l) (cdddr l)))
l))
and if you want to do it for any nth element:
(define (list-take list k)
(assert (not (negative? k)))
(let taking ((l list) (n k) (r '()))
(if (or (zero? n) (null? l))
(reverse r)
(taking (cdr l) (- n 1) (cons (car l) r)))))
(define (delete-nth l n)
(assert (positive? n))
(append (list-take l (- n 1))
(if (> n (length l))
'()
(list-tail l n))))
(define (nth-deleter n)
(lambda (l) (delete-nth l n)))
(define delete-3rd (nth-deleter 3))