I'm trying to solve a water, jug problem (one 7L, one 4L, get 5L in the 7L jug) using dept first search. However something keeps going wrong whenever I try to get a new state back from one of my actions.
Prolog Code
I can't figure out what is going wrong, this is what the output looks like after trace:
enter image description here
Thanks in advance for any help!
You should copy and paste your code into your question; we cannot copy and paste it from your images, which makes it more work to help you, which in turn makes it less likely that we will help.
Some problems I noticed anyway:
Your first rule for go_to_goal/3 does not talk about the relation between ClosedList and Path. You will compute the path but will never be able to communicate it to the caller. (Then again, you also ignore Path in solve/0...) If your Prolog system gives you "singleton variable" warnings, you should never ignore them!
You are using the == operator wrong. The goal State == (5, X) states that at the end you are looking for a pair where the first component is 5 (this part is fine) and the second component is an unbound variable. In fact, after your computations, the second component of the pair will be bound to some arithmetic term. This comparison will always fail. You should use the = (unification) operator instead. == is only used rarely, in particular situations.
If you put a term like X+Y-7 into the head of a rule, it will not be evaluated to a number. If you want it to be evaluated to a number, you must use is/2 in the body of your rules.
Your most immediate problem, however, is the following (visible from the trace you posted): The second clause of go_to_goal/3 tries to call action/2 with a pair (0, 0) as the first argument. This always fails because the first argument of every clause of action/2 is a term state(X, Y). If you change this to state(0, 0) in go_to_goal/3, you should be able to make a little bit of progress.
I have the following problem:
I define a function:
f[t_]:=(1-Exp[-t])/(1+Exp[-t])
and integrate it by:
g[t_]:=Integrate[f[t],t]
then when I try to plot it using:
Plot[g[t],{t,0,10}]
I get a list of errors of the kind Integrate::ilim: Invalid integration variable or limit(s) in 1.0000204285714285.
I don't understand where the problem is, but I expect it to be in the way I defined g[t], even if when I call it I get a well defined expression, namely -t+2Log[1+e^t] (also, when plotting this expression directly I don't get any problems). So, how can I solve this problem?
I tried by redefining the function as:
g[t_]:=Integrate[f[x],{x,0,t}]
but this way it takes a lot of time to plot (if it even does, after about 10 seconds I interrupted it, it is too slow anyway).
As correctly stated in the comments, changing := (SetDelayed) to = (Set) in the definition for g fixes the problem. The difference between these two definitions is that with Set the right hand side of the definition is evaluated at definition time and the closed form of the integral is assigned as a value of function g:
f[t_] := (1 - Exp[-t])/(1 + Exp[-t])
g[t_] = Integrate[f[x], {x, 0, t}];
Definition[g]
(* => g[t_]=ConditionalExpression[-t-Log[4]+2 Log[1+E^t],E^t>=-1] *)
With SetDelayed the right hand side (Integrate[f[x], {x, 0, t}]) is evaluated at each call of function g which results in very slow evaluation.
I'm in love with Ruby. In this language all core functions are actually methods. That's why I prefer postfix notation – when the data, which I want to process is placed left from the body of anonymous processing function, for example: array.map{...}. I believe, that it has advantages in how easy is this code to read.
But Mathetica, being functional (yeah, it can be procedural if you want) dictates a style, where Function name is placed left from the data. As we can see in its manuals, // is used only when it's some simple Function, without arguments, like list // MatrixForm. When Function needs a lot of arguments, people who wrote manuals, use syntax F[data].
It would be okay, but my problem is the case F[f,data], for example Do[function, {x, a, b}]. Most of Mathematica functions (if not all) have arguments in exactly this order – [function, data], not [data, function]. As I prefer to use pure functions to keep namespace clean instead of creating a lot of named functions in my notebook, the argument function can be too big – so big, that argument data would be placed on the 5-20th line of code after the line with Function call.
This is why sometimes, when evil Ruby nature takes me under control, I rewrite such functions in postfix way:
Because it's important for me, that pure function (potentially big code) is placed right from processing data. Yeah I do it and I'm happy. But there are two things:
this causes Mathematica's highlighting parser problem: the x in postfix notation is highlighted with blue color, not turquoise;
everytime when I look into Mathematica manuals, I see examples like this one: Do[x[[i]] = (v[[i]] - U[[i, i + 1 ;; n]].x[[i + 1 ;; n]])/ U[[i, i]], {i, n, 1, -1}];, which means... hell, they think it's easy to read/support/etc.?!
So these two things made me ask this question here: am I so bad boy, that use my Ruby-style, and should I write code like these guys do, or is it OK, and I don't have to worry, and should write as I like to?
The style you propose is frequently possible, but is inadvisable in the case of Do. The problem is that Do has the attribute HoldAll. This is important because the loop variable (x in the example) must remain unevaluated and be treated as a local variable. To see this, try evaluating these expressions:
x = 123;
Do[Print[x], {x, 1, 2}]
(* prints 1 and 2 *)
{x, 1, 2} // Do[Print[x], #]&
(* error: Do::itraw: Raw object 123 cannot be used as an iterator.
Do[Print[x], {123, 1, 2}]
*)
The error occurs because the pure function Do[Print[x], #]& lacks the HoldAll attribute, causing {x, 1, 2} to be evaluated. You could solve the problem by explicitly defining a pure function with the HoldAll attribute, thus:
{x, 1, 2} // Function[Null, Do[Print[x], #], HoldAll]
... but I suspect that the cure is worse than the disease :)
Thus, when one is using "binding" expressions like Do, Table, Module and so on, it is safest to conform with the herd.
I think you need to learn to use the styles that Mathematica most naturally supports. Certainly there is more than one way, and my code does not look like everyone else's. Nevertheless, if you continue to try to beat Mathematica syntax into your own preconceived style, based on a different language, I foresee nothing but continued frustration for you.
Whitespace is not evil, and you can easily add line breaks to separate long arguments:
Do[
x[[i]] = (v[[i]] - U[[i, i + 1 ;; n]].x[[i + 1 ;; n]]) / U[[i, i]]
, {i, n, 1, -1}
];
This said, I like to write using more prefix (f # x) and infix (x ~ f ~ y) notation that I usually see, and I find this valuable because it is easy to determine that such functions are receiving one and two arguments respectively. This is somewhat nonstandard, but I do not think it is kicking over the traces of Mathematica syntax. Rather, I see it as using the syntax to advantage. Sometimes this causes syntax highlighting to fail, but I can live with that:
f[x] ~Do~ {x, 2, 5}
When using anything besides the standard form of f[x, y, z] (with line breaks as needed), you must be more careful of evaluation order, and IMHO, readability can suffer. Consider this contrived example:
{x, y} // # + 1 & ## # &
I do not find this intuitive. Yes, for someone intimate with Mathematica's order of operations, it is readable, but I believe it does not improve clarity. I tend to reserve // postfix for named functions where reading is natural:
Do[f[x], {x, 10000}] //Timing //First
I'd say it is one of the biggest mistakes to try program in a language B in ways idiomatic for a language A, only because you happen to know the latter well and like it. There is nothing wrong in borrowing idioms, but you have to make sure to understand the second language well enough so that you know why other people use it the way they do.
In the particular case of your example, and generally, I want to draw attention to a few things others did not mention. First, Do is a scoping construct which uses dynamic scoping to localize its iterator symbols. Therefore, you have:
In[4]:=
x=1;
{x,1,5}//Do[f[x],#]&
During evaluation of In[4]:= Do::itraw: Raw object
1 cannot be used as an iterator. >>
Out[5]= Do[f[x],{1,1,5}]
What a surprise, isn't it. This won't happen when you use Do in a standard fashion.
Second, note that, while this fact is largely ignored, f[#]&[arg] is NOT always the same as f[arg]. Example:
ClearAll[f];
SetAttributes[f, HoldAll];
f[x_] := Print[Unevaluated[x]]
f[5^2]
5^2
f[#] &[5^2]
25
This does not affect your example, but your usage is close enough to those cases affected by this, since you manipulate the scopes.
Mathematica supports 4 ways of applying a function to its arguments:
standard function form: f[x]
prefix: f#x or g##{x,y}
postfix: x // f, and
infix: x~g~y which is equivalent to g[x,y].
What form you choose to use is up to you, and is often an aesthetic choice, more than anything else. Internally, f#x is interpreted as f[x]. Personally, I primarily use postfix, like you, because I view each function in the chain as a transformation, and it is easier to string multiple transformations together like that. That said, my code will be littered with both the standard form and prefix form mostly depending on whim, but I tend to use standard form more as it evokes a feeling of containment with regards to the functions parameters.
I took a little liberty with the prefix form, as I included the shorthand form of Apply (##) alongside Prefix (#). Of the built in commands, only the standard form, infix form, and Apply allow you easily pass more than one variable to your function without additional work. Apply (e.g. g ## {x,y}) works by replacing the Head of the expression ({x,y}) with the function, in effect evaluating the function with multiple variables (g##{x,y} == g[x,y]).
The method I use to pass multiple variables to my functions using the postfix form is via lists. This necessitates a little more work as I have to write
{x,y} // f[ #[[1]], #[[2]] ]&
to specify which element of the List corresponds to the appropriate parameter. I tend to do this, but you could combine this with Apply like
{x,y} // f ## #&
which involves less typing, but could be more difficult to interpret when you read it later.
Edit: I should point out that f and g above are just placeholders, they can, and often are, replaced with pure functions, e.g. #+1& # x is mostly equivalent to #+1&[x], see Leonid's answer.
To clarify, per Leonid's answer, the equivalence between f#expr and f[expr] is true if f does not posses an attribute that would prevent the expression, expr, from being evaluated before being passed to f. For instance, one of the Attributes of Do is HoldAll which allows it to act as a scoping construct which allows its parameters to be evaluated internally without undo outside influence. The point is expr will be evaluated prior to it being passed to f, so if you need it to remain unevaluated, extra care must be taken, like creating a pure function with a Hold style attribute.
You can certainly do it, as you evidently know. Personally, I would not worry about how the manuals write code, and just write it the way I find natural and memorable.
However, I have noticed that I usually fall into definite patterns. For instance, if I produce a list after some computation and incidentally plot it to make sure it's what I expected, I usually do
prodListAfterLongComputation[
args,
]//ListPlot[#,PlotRange->Full]&
If I have a list, say lst, and I am now focusing on producing a complicated plot, I'll do
ListPlot[
lst,
Option1->Setting1,
Option2->Setting2
]
So basically, anything that is incidental and perhaps not important to be readable (I don't need to be able to instantaneously parse the first ListPlot as it's not the point of that bit of code) ends up being postfix, to avoid disrupting the already-written complicated code it is applied to. Conversely, complicated code I tend to write in the way I find easiest to parse later, which, in my case, is something like
f[
g[
a,
b,
c
]
]
even though it takes more typing and, if one does not use the Workbench/Eclipse plugin, makes it more work to reorganize code.
So I suppose I'd answer your question with "do whatever is most convenient after taking into account the possible need for readability and the possible loss of convenience such as code highlighting, extra work to refactor code etc".
Of course all this applies if you're the only one working with some piece of code; if there are others, it is a different question alltogether.
But this is just an opinion. I doubt it's possible for anybody to offer more than this.
For one-argument functions (f#(arg)), ((arg)//f) and f[arg] are completely equivalent even in the sense of applying of attributes of f. In the case of multi-argument functions one may write f#Sequence[args] or Sequence[args]//f with the same effect:
In[1]:= SetAttributes[f,HoldAll];
In[2]:= arg1:=Print[];
In[3]:= f#arg1
Out[3]= f[arg1]
In[4]:= f#Sequence[arg1,arg1]
Out[4]= f[arg1,arg1]
So it seems that the solution for anyone who likes postfix notation is to use Sequence:
x=123;
Sequence[Print[x],{x,1,2}]//Do
(* prints 1 and 2 *)
Some difficulties can potentially appear with functions having attribute SequenceHold or HoldAllComplete:
In[18]:= Select[{#, ToExpression[#, InputForm, Attributes]} & /#
Names["System`*"],
MemberQ[#[[2]], SequenceHold | HoldAllComplete] &][[All, 1]]
Out[18]= {"AbsoluteTiming", "DebugTag", "EvaluationObject", \
"HoldComplete", "InterpretationBox", "MakeBoxes", "ParallelEvaluate", \
"ParallelSubmit", "Parenthesize", "PreemptProtect", "Rule", \
"RuleDelayed", "Set", "SetDelayed", "SystemException", "TagSet", \
"TagSetDelayed", "Timing", "Unevaluated", "UpSet", "UpSetDelayed"}
Is there any way to get at the actual messages generated during the evaluation of an expression in Mathematica? Say I'm numerically solving an ODE and it blows up, like so
In[1] := sol = NDSolve[{x'[t] == -15 x[t], x[0] == 1}, x, {t, 0, 1},
Method -> "ExplicitEuler"];
In this case, I'll get the NDSolve::mxst error, telling me the maximum number of 10000 steps was reached at t == 0.08671962566152185. Now, if I look at the $MessageList variable, I only receive the message name; in particular, the information about the value of t where NDSolve decided to quit has been lost.
Now, I can always get that information from sol using the InterpolatingFunctionDomain function from one of the standard add-on packages, but if I can somehow pull it out of the message, it would be quite helpful.
You might be able to use $MessagePrePrint to set up a function which would store away each of the messages for later retrieval.
I don't know if this will work, but if the only thing you want to know are the values of specific parameters at the point of error then a kludgy way of getting them would be to define those variables with dummy values globally. This works with loop counters, but I don't know if it works from within NDSolve. Another kludge would be to make t Dynamic and have an evaluated cell with t.
A more elegant (and probably the correct) approach would be to use Reap and Sow.