How do you write a F# recursive function that accepts a positive integer n and a list xs as input, and returns a list except first n elements in xs?
let rec something n xs = .. something 7 [1..10] = [8; 9; 10]
I don't think that recursion is the most efficient way to solve this problem, but you can do it like this:
let rec something n xs =
if n > List.length xs || n < 0 then failwith "incorrect parameter n - out of range"
else if n = 0 then xs
else something (n-1) (xs |> List.tail)
let res = something 7 [1..10]
open System
Console.WriteLine(res)
//something 7 [1..10] = [8; 9; 10]
The simple answer is to use List.skip ... i.e. [0..10] |> List.skip 5
To reimplement List.skip you'd be looking at something like:
let rec listSkip n list =
match (n, list) with
| 0, list -> list
| _, [] -> failwith "The index is outside the legal range"
| n, _ when n < 0 -> failwith "The index cannot be negative"
| n, _ :: tl -> listSkip (n - 1) tl
As this is recursion is eligible for tail-call optimization, performance should be similar to an explicit loop.
I've avoided an explicit guard checking List.length against n because List.length requires iteration of the entire list ( which we'd have to check each round of the recursion ). Thus it's cheaper just to try and remove n items and fail if we run into an empty list before n reaches 0.
Related
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 =
...
How do you write a f# recursive function that accepts a positive integer n and a list xs as input, and returns a list containing only the first n elements in xs.
let rec something n xs =
..
something 3 [1..10] = [1;2;3]
The short answer is: Don't, just use Seq.take.
A simple version would be something like:
let rec take n list =
match n with
| 0 -> []
| _ -> List.head list :: take (n - 1) (List.tail list)
A tail-recursive could look like:
let rec take n list =
let rec innertake m innerlist acc =
match m with
| 0 -> List.rev acc
| _ -> innertake (m - 1) (List.tail innerlist) ((List.head innerlist) :: acc)
innertake n list []
Note that neither of these does anything to handle the case that the input list is shorter than the requested number of items.
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;;
I'm pretty new to Haskell, and I'm having a little trouble. I'm trying to implement a function that takes a list, and an int. the int is supposed to be the index k at which the list is split into a pair of lists. The first one containing the first k elements of the list, and the second from k+1 to the last element. Here's what I have so far:
split :: [a] -> Int -> ([a], [a])
split [] k = error "Empty list!"
split (x:[]) k = ([x],[])
split xs k | k >= (length xs) = error "Number out of range!"
| k < 0 = error "Number out of range!"
I can't actually figure out how to do the split. Any help would be appreciated.
First of all, note that the function you are trying to construct is already in the standard library, in the Prelude - it is called splitAt. Now, directly looking at its definition is confusing, as there are two algorithms, one which doesn't use the standard recursive structure at all -splitAt n xs = (take n xs, drop n xs) - and one that is hand-optimized making it ugly. The former makes more intuitive sense, as you are simply taking a prefix and a suffix and putting them in a pair. However, the latter teaches more, and has this overall structure:
splitAt :: Int -> [a] -> ([a], [a])
splitAt 0 xs = ([], xs)
splitAt _ [] = ([], [])
splitAt n (x:xs) = (x:xs', xs'')
where
(xs', xs'') = splitAt (n - 1) xs
The basic idea is that if a list is made up of a head and a tail (it is of the form x:xs), then the list going from index k+1 onwards will be the same as the list going from k onwards once you remove the first element - drop (k + 1) (x : xs) == drop k xs. To construct the prefix, you similarly remove the first element, take a smaller prefix, and stick the element back on - take (k + 1) (x : xs) == x : take k xs.
What about this:
splitAt' = \n -> \xs -> (take n xs, drop n xs)
Some tests:
> splitAt' 3 [1..10]
> ([1,2,3],[4,5,6,7,8,9,10])
> splitAt' 0 [1..10]
> ([],[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10])
> splitAt' 3 []
> ([],[])
> splitAt' 11 [1..10]
> ([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10],[])
> splitAt' 2 "haskell"
> ("ha","skell")
Basically, you need some way of passing along partial progress as you recurse through the list. I used a second function that takes an accumulator parameter; it is called from split and then calls itself recursively. There are almost certainly better ways..
EDIT: removed all the length checks., but I believe the use of ++ means it's still O(n^2).
split xs k | k < 0 = error "Number out of range!"
split xs k = ssplit [] xs k
ssplit p xs 0 = (p, xs)
ssplit p (x:xs) k = ssplit (p++[x]) xs (k-1)
ssplit p [] k = error "Number out of range!"
to get the behavior in the original post or
ssplit p [] k = (p,[])
To get the more forgiving behavior of the standard splitAt function.
A common trick for getting rid of quadratic behavior in building a list is to build it up backwards, then reverse it, modifying Mark Reed's solution:
split xs k | k < 0 = error "Number out of range!"
split xs k = (reverse a, b)
where
(a,b) = ssplit [] xs k
ssplit p xs 0 = (p, xs)
ssplit p (x:xs) k = ssplit (x:p) xs (k-1)
ssplit p [] k = error "Number out of range!"
The error check in ssplit is fine since won't get checked (one of the earlier patterns will match) unless there is an actual error.
In practice you might want to add a few strictness annotations to ssplit to manage stack growth, but that's a further refinement.
See splitAt in the prelude:
ghci> :t flip splitAt
flip splitAt :: [a] -> Int -> ([a], [a])
ghci> flip splitAt ['a'..'j'] 5
("abcde","fghij")
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.