So consider getting a list of [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9] and reshape it into [[1; 2; 3]; [4; 5; 6]; [7; 8; 9]]. How would you do that in OCaml? I want a simple function or something from the standard library.
Turns out, it can be easily done with 3 lines of code, considering that the length of the list is divisible by 3.
let rec re_shape = function
| x :: xs :: xz :: xt -> [x; xs; xz] :: re_shape xt
| _ -> []
How this works is that for each iteration it cons a list of 3 to the rest of the function, till it reaches the end. The last line is added for safety.
As you have shown an effort to solve this, for your consideration, see a strategy below for generalizing this to allow for any length.
The partition function will allow us to get the first n elements from the list and the remainder, raising Invalid_argument if there aren't n elements in the list.
The chunks function applies this recursively to the remainder to build a list of lists.
let partition n lst =
let rec partition' n (first, rest) =
match n, rest with
| 0, _ -> (List.rev first, rest)
| _, [] -> raise (Invalid_argument "List not long enough")
| _, x::xs -> partition' (n-1) (x :: first, xs)
in
partition' n ([], lst)
let rec chunks n lst =
match partition n lst with
| first, [] -> [first]
| first, rest -> first :: chunks n rest
| exception (Invalid_argument _) ->
raise (Invalid_argument (Format.sprintf "List length not evenly divisible by %d" n))
This second function is not tail-recursive, though that can readily be addressed in OCaml 4.14 and later with:
let[#tail_mod_cons] rec chunks n lst =
...
Related
I am new to F# & tuples and I am trying to split a list into three lists of tuples using recursion and matching.
For example, a list of [1; 2; 3] would return:
l1 = [1]
l2 = [2]
l3 = [3]
or
[1;2;3;4;5;6;7]:
l1 = [1;2;3]
l2 = [4; 5]
l3 = [6; 7]
So far my code starts out as
let rec split x =
match x with
| _ -> [], [], []
I'm not sure where to start when inserting elements into each list.
The most basic approach would be to walk over the list, process the rest of it recursively and then append the current element to one of the three returned lists. You will need to add an extra parameters i to the function to keep track of how far in the list you are (and then use this to determine where should the current elemnt go). The general structure in the most basic form is:
let split l =
let length = List.length l
let rec loop i l =
match l with
| [] ->
// Empty list just becomes a triple of empty lists
[], [], []
| x::xs ->
// Process the rest of the list recursively. This
// gives us three lists containing the values from 'xs'
let l1, l2, l3 = loop (i + 1) xs
// Now comes the tricky bit. Here you need to figure out
// whether 'x' should go into 'l1', 'l2' or 'l3'.
// Then you can append it to one of them using something like:
l1, x::l2, l3
// Walk over the list, starting with index 'i=0'
loop 0 l
What to do about the tricky bit? I do not have a solution that works exactly as you wanted, but the following is close - it simply looks whether i is greater than 1/3 of the length or 2/3 of the length:
let split l =
let length = List.length l
let rec loop i l =
match l with
| [] -> [], [], []
| x::xs ->
let l1, l2, l3 = loop (i + 1) xs
if i >= length / 3 * 2 then l1, l2, x::l3
elif i >= length / 3 then l1, x::l2, l3
else x::l1, l2, l3
loop 0 l
This will always create groups of length / 3 and put remaining elements in the last list:
split [1..3] // [1], [2], [3]
split [1..4] // [1], [2], [3; 4]
split [1..5] // [1], [2], [3; 4; 5]
split [1..6] // [1; 2], [3; 4], [5; 6]
You should be able to adapt this to the behaviour you need - there is some fiddly calculation that you need to do to figure out exactly where the cut-off points are, but that's a matter of getting the +/-1s right!
There is a function for that in the List module.
You can test it easily in F# interactive (fsi).
let input = [1;2;3];;
let output = List.splitInto 3 input;;
output;;
val it : int list list = [[1]; [2]; [3]]
So it returns a list of lists.
If you want to do it by hand, you can still use other list functions (which might be good exercise in itself):
let manualSplitInto count list =
let l = List.length list
let n = l / count
let r = l % count
List.append
[(List.take (n+r) list)]
(List.unfold (fun rest ->
match rest with
| [] -> None
| _ -> let taken = min n (List.length rest)
Some (List.take taken rest, List.skip taken rest))
(List.skip (n+r) list))
Here, List.unfold does the iteration (recursing) part for you.
So, if you really want to train working with recursive functions, you will end up writing your own List.unfold replacement or something more tailored to your concrete use case.
let pedestrianSplitInto count list =
let l = List.length list
let n = l / count
let r = l % count
let rec step rest acc =
match rest with
| [] -> acc
| _ ->
let taken = min n (List.length rest)
step (List.skip taken rest) ((List.take taken rest) :: acc)
List.rev (step (List.skip (n+r) list) [List.take (n+r) list])
Please observe how similar the implementation of function step is to the lambda given to List.unfold in manualSplitInto.
If you also do not want to use functions like List.take or List.skip, you will have to go even lower level and do element wise operations, such as:
let rec splitAtIndex index front rear =
match index with
| 0 -> (List.rev front, rear)
| _ -> splitAtIndex (index - 1) ((List.head rear) :: front) (List.tail rear)
let stillLivingOnTreesSplitInto count list =
let l = List.length list
let n = l / count
let r = l % count
let rec collect result (front,rear) =
match rear with
| [] -> (front :: result)
| _ -> collect (front :: result) (splitAtIndex n [] rear)
let x = splitAtIndex (n+r) [] list
collect [] x |> List.rev
If you know it will always be triplets then this should work.
let xs = [1..7]
let n = List.length xs
let y = List.mapi (fun i x -> (x, 3 * i / n)) xs
List.foldBack (fun (x, i) (a,b,c) -> match i with 0 -> (x::a,b,c) | 1 -> (a,x::b,c) | 2 -> (a,b,x::c)) y (([],[],[]))
I have a list of integers named t that has an even length n = List.length t. I want to get two lists, the partition of t from index 0 to (n / 2 - 1), and the partition of t from index (n / 2) to (n-1). In other words, I want to split the list t in two parts, but I cannot find anything that does that in the List module (there is List.filter, but it does not filter by index, it takes a function instead).
An example of what I want to do:
let t = [8 ; 66 ; 4 ; 1 ; -2 ; 6 ; 4 ; 1] in
(* Split it to get t1 = [ 8 ; 66 ; 4 ; 1] and t2 = [-2 ; 6 ; 4 ; 1] *)
For now,I have something like this
let rec split t1 t2 n =
match t1 with
| hd :: tl when (List.length tl > n) -> split tl (hd :: t2) n;
| hd :: tl when (List.length tl = n) -> (t1,t2);
| _ -> raise (Failure "Unexpected error");;
let a = [1;2;3;4;7;8];;
let b,c = split a [] (List.length a / 2 - 1);;
List.iter (fun x -> print_int x) b;
print_char '|';
List.iter (fun x -> print_int x) c;
Output is:
478|321, the order has been reversed!
Calculating the length of the list requires walking the list, so it takes time that's linear in the length of the list. Your attempt calculates the length of the remaining list at each step, which makes the total running time quadratic. But you actually don't need to do that! First you calculate the total length of the list. After that, the place to cut is halfway from the beginning, which you can locate by incrementing a counter as you go through the list.
As for the reversal, let's look at what happens to the first element of the list. In the first call to split, the accumulator t2 is the empty list, so h gets put at the end of the list. The next element will be placed before that, and so on. You need to put the first element at the head of the list, so prepend it to the list built by the recursive call.
let rec split_at1 n l =
if n = 0 then ([], l) else
match l with
| [] -> ([], []) (*or raise an exception, as you wish*)
| h :: t -> let (l1, l2) = split_at1 (n-1) t in (h :: l1, l2);;
let split_half1 l = split_at1 (List.length l / 2) l;;
This operates in linear time. A potential downside of this implementation is that the recursive call it makes is not a tail call, so it will consume a large amount of stack on large lists. You can fix this by building the first half as an accumulator that's passed to the function. As we saw above, this creates a list in reverse order. So reverse it at the end. This is a common idiom when working with lists.
let rec split_at2 n acc l =
if n = 0 then (List.rev acc, l) else
match l with
| [] -> (List.rev acc, [])
| h :: t -> split_at2 (n-1) (h :: acc) t;;
let split_half2 l = split_at2 (List.length l / 2) [] l;;
Trying to write a recursive function that will cut a list by n. Then return 2 lists. So if I pass
cut(2, [5;10;4;2;7]);;
val it : int list * int list = ([5; 10], [4; 2; 7])
I would like to get something like that.
let rec cut (n, xs) =
match n, xs with
| 0, xt -> (n, xs)
| n, x::xt -> cut(n, xt), xs;;
Please help.
I'll ad an explanation of #MisterMetaphors recursive function.
The cut function isn't recursive but aux is, it works by counting down from n and removing elements from the head of the list passed to cut.
Say you call cut like this cut 2 [ 3; 4; 5; 7; 8 ]. aux is a pattern matching function taking three arguments: n, partition 1, partition 2. Partition 1 starts out with being an empty list and partition 2 starts out with being the full list passed to cut.
First time aux will match the second clause, then it'll call itself with arguments (1, [3], [4; 5; 7; 8]). Next time it'll also match second clause, now it calls itself with (0, [4; 3], [5; 7; 8]). Third and final time it matches first clause (n=0) and it will return a tuple containing xs and ys.
Notice however that the elements of the xs is in reverse order since each element was prepended (using cons operator ::). The reason this is done is because it's an O(1) operation compared to the append operator # which is O(n) on the left side.
Since xs is in reverse order the last expression in the function is a reversal of xs.
An alternative and slightly short definition could be:
let cut n xs =
let rec aux = function
| 0, xs, ys -> List.rev xs, ys
| n, xs, y :: ys -> aux (n - 1, y :: xs, ys)
| _ -> failwith "invalid arguments"
aux (n, [], xs)
It's probably better to combine built-in functions on lists or sequences to achieve this:
let cut' (n, xs) =
Seq.take n xs, Seq.skip n xs
Recursively, your function can be defined like so:
let cut (n, xs) =
let rec aux = function
| 0, xs, ys -> xs, ys
| n, xs, y :: ys -> aux (n - 1, y :: xs, ys)
| _ -> failwith "invalid arguments"
let l, r = aux (n, [], xs)
(List.rev l, r)
I would like to implement a function that takes as input a size n and a list. This function will cut the list into two lists, one of size n and the rest in another list. I am new to this language and have a hard time learning the syntax.
The main problem I have is that is finding a way to express a size of the list without using any loops or mutable variables.
Can anyone give a me some pointers?
Let's start with the function's type signature. Since it gets n and a list as arguments and returns a pair of lists, you have a function split:
val split : int -> 'a list -> 'a list * 'a list
Here is one approach to implement this function:
let split n xs =
let rec splitUtil n xs acc =
match xs with
| [] -> List.rev acc, []
| _ when n = 0 -> List.rev acc, xs
| x::xs' -> splitUtil (n-1) xs' (x::acc)
splitUtil n xs []
The idea is using an accumulator acc to hold elements you have traversed and decreasing n a long the way. Because elements are prepended to acc, in the end you have to reverse it to get the correct order.
The function has two base cases to terminate:
There's no element left to traverse (xs = [] at that point).
You have gone through the first n elements of the list (n decreases to 0 at that time).
Here is a short illustration of how split computes the result:
split 2 [1; 2; 3] // call the auxiliary function splitUtil
~> splitUtil 2 [1; 2; 3] [] // match the 3rd case of x::xs'
~> splitUtil 1 [2; 3] [1] // match the 3rd case of x::xs'
~> splitUtil 0 [3] [2; 1] // match the 2nd case of n = 0 (base case)
~> List.rev [2; 1], [3] // call List.rev on acc
~> [1; 2], [3]
let split n list =
let rec not_a_loop xs = function
| (0, ys) | (_, ([] as ys)) -> (List.rev xs), ys
| (n, x::ys) -> not_a_loop (x::xs) (n-1, ys)
not_a_loop [] (n, list)
New solution - splitAt is now built into List and Array. See commit around 2014 on github. I noticed this today while using F# in VS.2015
Now you can simply do this...
let splitList n list =
List.splitAt n list
And as you might expect the signature is...
n: int -> list: 'a list -> 'a list * 'a list
Example usage:
let (firstThree, remainder) = [1;2;3;4;5] |> (splitList 3)
printfn "firstThree %A" firstThree
printfn "remainder %A" remainder
Output:
firstThree [1; 2; 3]
remainder [4; 5]
Github for those interested: https://github.com/dsyme/visualfsharp/commit/1fc647986f79d20f58978b3980e2da5a1e9b8a7d
One more way, using fold:
let biApply f (a, b) = (f a, f b)
let splitAt n list =
let splitter ((xs, ys), n') c =
if n' < n then
((c :: xs, ys), n' + 1)
else
((xs, c :: ys), n' + 1)
List.fold splitter (([], []), 0) list
|> fst
|> biApply List.rev
Here is a great series on folds than you can follow to learn more on the topic.
I'm looking for the best way to partition a list (or seq) so that groups have a given size.
for ex. let's say I want to group with size 2 (this could be any other number though):
let xs = [(a,b,c); (a,b,d); (y,z,y); (w,y,z); (n,y,z)]
let grouped = partitionBySize 2 input
// => [[(a,b,c);(a,b,d)]; [(y,z,y);(w,y,z)]; [(n,y,z)]]
The obvious way to implement partitionBySize would be by adding the position to every tuple in the input list so that it becomes
[(0,a,b,c), (1,a,b,d), (2,y,z,y), (3,w,y,z), (4,n,y,z)]
and then use GroupBy with
xs |> Seq.ofList |> Seq.GroupBy (function | (i,_,_,_) -> i - (i % n))
However this solution doesn't look very elegant to me.
Is there a better way to implement this function (maybe with a built-in function)?
This seems to be a repeating pattern that's not captured by any function in the F# core library. When solving similar problems earlier, I defined a function Seq.groupWhen (see F# snippets) that turns a sequence into groups. A new group is started when the predicate holds.
You could solve the problem using Seq.groupWhen similarly to Seq.group (by starting a new group at even index). Unlike with Seq.group, this is efficient, because Seq.groupWhen iterates over the input sequence just once:
[3;3;2;4;1;2;8]
|> Seq.mapi (fun i v -> i, v) // Add indices to the values (as first tuple element)
|> Seq.groupWhen (fun (i, v) -> i%2 = 0) // Start new group after every 2nd element
|> Seq.map (Seq.map snd) // Remove indices from the values
Implementing the function directly using recursion is probably easier - the solution from John does exactly what you need - but if you wanted to see a more general approach then Seq.groupWhen may be interesting.
List.chunkBySize (hat tip: Scott Wlaschin) is now available and does exactly what you're talking about. It appears to be new with F# 4.0.
let grouped = [1..10] |> List.chunkBySize 3
// val grouped : int list list =
// [[1; 2; 3]; [4; 5; 6]; [7; 8; 9]; [10]]
Seq.chunkBySize and Array.chunkBySize are also now available.
Here's a tail-recursive function that traverses the list once.
let chunksOf n items =
let rec loop i acc items =
seq {
match i, items, acc with
//exit if chunk size is zero or input list is empty
| _, [], [] | 0, _, [] -> ()
//counter=0 so yield group and continue looping
| 0, _, _::_ -> yield List.rev acc; yield! loop n [] items
//decrement counter, add head to group, and loop through tail
| _, h::t, _ -> yield! loop (i-1) (h::acc) t
//reached the end of input list, yield accumulated elements
//handles items.Length % n <> 0
| _, [], _ -> yield List.rev acc
}
loop n [] items
Usage
[1; 2; 3; 4; 5]
|> chunksOf 2
|> Seq.toList //[[1; 2]; [3; 4]; [5]]
I like the elegance of Tomas' approach, but I benchmarked both our functions using an input list of 10 million elements. This one clocked in at 9 secs vs 22 for his. Of course, as he admitted, the most efficient method would probably involve arrays/loops.
What about a recursive approach? - only requires a single pass
let rec partitionBySize length inp dummy =
match inp with
|h::t ->
if dummy |> List.length < length then
partitionBySize length t (h::dummy)
else dummy::(partitionBySize length t (h::[]))
|[] -> dummy::[]
Then invoke it with partitionBySize 2 xs []
let partitionBySize size xs =
let sq = ref (seq xs)
seq {
while (Seq.length !sq >= size) do
yield Seq.take size !sq
sq := Seq.skip size !sq
if not (Seq.isEmpty !sq) then yield !sq
}
// result to list, if you want
|> Seq.map (Seq.toList)
|> Seq.toList
UPDATE
let partitionBySize size (sq:seq<_>) =
seq {
let e = sq.GetEnumerator()
let empty = ref true;
while !empty do
yield seq { for i = 1 to size do
empty := e.MoveNext()
if !empty then yield e.Current
}
}
array slice version:
let partitionBySize size xs =
let xa = Array.ofList xs
let len = xa.Length
[
for i in 0..size..(len-1) do
yield ( if i + size >= len then xa.[i..] else xa.[i..(i+size-1)] ) |> Array.toList
]
Well, I was late for the party. The code below is a tail-recursive version using high-order functions on List:
let partitionBySize size xs =
let i = size - (List.length xs - 1) % size
let xss, _, _ =
List.foldBack( fun x (acc, ls, j) ->
if j = size then ((x::ls)::acc, [], 1)
else (acc, x::ls, j+1)
) xs ([], [], i)
xss
I did the same benchmark as Daniel did. This function is efficient while it is 2x faster than his approach on my machine. I also compared it with an array/loop version, they are comparable in terms of performance.
Moreover, unlike John's answer, this version preserves order of elements in inner lists.