How can write two statement within then statement? - if-statement

I am writing a code in Haskell which take a list of 0's and 1's like [1,1,0,0,1,0,1] return a Pair(tuple) of the number occurrence of 0 and 1 in a list like (3,4).
Here is my code:
inc :: Int -> Int
inc x = (\x -> x + 1) x
count :: [Int] -> (Int,Int)
c = (0,0)
count x =
if null x
then c
else if head x == 0
then do
inc (fst c)
count (tail x)
else if head x == 1
then do
inc (snd c)
count (tail x)
I have also tried doing it in a guarded form:
count :: [Int] -> (Int,Int)
c = (0,0)
count x
| null x = c
| head x == 0 = inc (fst c) >> count (tail x)
| head x == 1 = inc (snd c) >> count (tail x)
The main problem is that I am not sure how to implement two function in one then statement.

You're thinking all imperatively. Something like do { inc (fst c); count (tail x) } would only make sense if c was some kind of mutable state variable. Haskell variables are not mutable, so inc can't modify the fst of c, it can only give you a modified copy. This might become clearer if you rewrite inc to the completely equivalent simpler form:
inc x = x + 1
(In fact, inc = (+1) would also do.)
Now, in count, you're trying to carry on and increment a single accumulator variable through the recursion loop. You can do that, but you need to be explicit about passing the modified version to the recursive call:
count = go (0,0)
where go :: (Int,Int) -> [Int] -> (Int,Int)
go c x
| null x = c
| head x == 0 = go (first inc c) (tail x)
| head x == 1 = go (second inc c) (tail x)
This pattern of defining a small local helper function (go is just an arbitrary name, I could have also called it getTheCountingDone) and using it as the “loop body” of the recursion is quite common in Haskell. Basically go (0,0) “initialises” c to the value (0,0), then starts the first loop iteration. For the second iteration, you recurse to e.g. go (first inc c), i.e. you start the loop again with the updated c variable.
I've used first and second for incrementing the respective tuple field. fst only reads the first field, i.e. gives you its value, whereas first makes a tuple-update function from an element-update function. Instead of import Control.Arrow you could also define this yourself:
first :: (a->b) -> (a,y) -> (b,y)
first f (a, y) = (f a, y)
second :: (a->b) -> (x,a) -> (x,b)
second f (x, a) = (x, f a)
(The Control.Arrow version is actually more general, but you don't need to worry about that – you can use it in just the same way.)
Note that deconstructing lists with head and tail is heavily eschewed in Haskell: it's easy to get wrong – you may forget to check the list is nonempty before accessing an element, which will throw a nasty runtime error. Better use pattern matching:
count = go (0,0)
where go c [] = c
go c (0:xs) = go (first inc c) xs
go c (1:xs) = go (second inc c) xs
Actually this is still not safe: you don't have exhaustive cases; the function fails if the list contains anything but zeroes or ones. Perhaps you'd like to count all zero and nonzero elements?
count = go (0,0)
where go c [] = c
go c (0:xs) = go (first inc c) xs
go c (_:xs) = go (second inc c) xs

another alternative
> import Data.List(group,sort)
> count = tuplify . map length . group . sort
where tuplify [x,y] = (x,y)

One solution would be to filter the list twice, once keeping the zeroes, and once keeping the ones:
count :: [Int] -> (Int, Int)
count nums = (length (filter (0 ==) nums), length (filter (1 ==) nums))

One option would be to have a second parameter for your count function which keeps track of what you have already counted:
count :: [Int] -> (Int, Int) -> (Int, Int)
-- if the list is empty, return the ones and zeroes already counted
count [] (zeroes, ones) = (zeroes, ones)
-- if first element is a 0, increment the existing count for zeroes
-- and count the rest
count (0:more) (zeroes, ones) = count more (zeroes + 1, ones)
-- as before, but the first element is a 1
count (1:more) (zeroes, ones) = count more (zeroes, ones + 1)
When we call count, we have to give it a 'starting count' of (0,0):
count [1,0,1,1,1,0,0,1] (0,0)
which returns (3,5) as the first 0 in the initial pair is incremented 3 times by the zeroes in the list, and the second 0 in the initial pair is incremented 5 times by the ones in the list.
This solution is a common functional programming style called 'accumulating parameter'.

Related

Breaking a list into sublists of a specified size using foldr

I'm taking a functional programming class and I'm having a hard time leaving the OOP mindset behind and finding answers to a lot of my questions.
I have to create a function that takes an ordered list and converts it into specified size sublists using a variation of fold.
This isn't right, but it's what I have:
splitList :: (Ord a) => Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList size xs
| [condition] = foldr (\item subList -> item:subList) [] xs
| otherwise =
I've been searching and I found out that foldr is the variation that works better for what I want, and I think I've understood how fold works, I just don't know how I'll set up the guards so that when length sublist == size haskell resets the accumulator and goes on to the next list.
If I didn't explain myself correctly, here's the result I want:
> splitList 3 [1..10]
> [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9],[10]]
Thanks!
While Fabián's and chi's answers are entirely correct, there is actually an option to solve this puzzle using foldr. Consider the following code:
splitList :: Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList n =
foldr (\el acc -> case acc of
[] -> [[el]]
(h : t) | length h < n -> (el : h) : t
_ -> [el] : acc
) []
The strategy here is to build up a list by extending its head as long as its length is lesser than desired. This solution has, however, two drawbacks:
It does something slightly different than in your example;
splitList 3 [1..10] produces [[1],[2,3,4],[5,6,7],[8,9,10]]
It's complexity is O(n * length l), as we measure length of up to n–sized list on each of the element which yields linear number of linear operations.
Let's first take care of first issue. In order to start counting at the beginning we need to traverse the list left–to–right, while foldr does it right–to–left. There is a common trick called "continuation passing" which will allow us to reverse the direction of the walk:
splitList :: Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList n l = map reverse . reverse $
foldr (\el cont acc ->
case acc of
[] -> cont [[el]]
(h : t) | length h < n -> cont ((el : h) : t)
_ -> cont ([el] : acc)
) id l []
Here, instead of building the list in the accumulator we build up a function that will transform the list in the right direction. See this question for details. The side effect is reversing the list so we need to counter that by reverse application to the whole list and all of its elements. This goes linearly and tail-recursively tho.
Now let's work on the performance issue. The problem was that the length is linear on casual lists. There are two solutions for this:
Use another structure that caches length for a constant time access
Cache the value by ourselves
Because I guess it is a list exercise, let's go for the latter option:
splitList :: Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList n l = map reverse . reverse . snd $
foldr (\el cont (countAcc, listAcc) ->
case listAcc of
[] -> cont (countAcc, [[el]])
(h : t) | countAcc < n -> cont (countAcc + 1, (el : h) : t)
(h : t) -> cont (1, [el] : (h : t))
) id l (1, [])
Here we extend our computational state with a counter that at each points stores the current length of the list. This gives us a constant check on each element and results in linear time complexity in the end.
A way to simplify this problem would be to split this into multiple functions. There are two things you need to do:
take n elements from the list, and
keep taking from the list as much as possible.
Lets try taking first:
taking :: Int -> [a] -> [a]
taking n [] = undefined
taking n (x:xs) = undefined
If there are no elemensts then we cannot take any more elements so we can only return an empty list, on the other hand if we do have an element then we can think of taking n (x:xs) as x : taking (n-1) xs, we would only need to check that n > 0.
taking n (x:xs)
| n > 0 = x :taking (n-1) xs
| otherwise = []
Now, we need to do that multiple times with the remainder so we should probably also return whatever remains from taking n elements from a list, in this case it would be whatever remains when n = 0 so we could try to adapt it to
| otherwise = ([], x:xs)
and then you would need to modify the type signature to return ([a], [a]) and the other 2 definitions to ensure you do return whatever remained after taking n.
With this approach your splitList would look like:
splitList n [] = []
splitList n l = chunk : splitList n remainder
where (chunk, remainder) = taking n l
Note however that folding would not be appropriate since it "flattens" whatever you are working on, for example given a [Int] you could fold to produce a sum which would be an Int. (foldr :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b or "foldr function zero list produces an element of the function return type")
You want:
splitList 3 [1..10]
> [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9],[10]]
Since the "remainder" [10] in on the tail, I recommend you use foldl instead. E.g.
splitList :: (Ord a) => Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList size xs
| size > 0 = foldl go [] xs
| otherwise = error "need a positive size"
where go acc x = ....
What should go do? Essentially, on your example, we must have:
splitList 3 [1..10]
= go (splitList 3 [1..9]) 10
= go [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]] 10
= [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9],[10]]
splitList 3 [1..9]
= go (splitList 3 [1..8]) 9
= go [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8]] 9
= [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]]
splitList 3 [1..8]
= go (splitList 3 [1..7]) 8
= go [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7]] 8
= [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8]]
and
splitList 3 [1]
= go [] 1
= [[1]]
Hence, go acc x should
check if acc is empty, if so, produce a singleton list [[x]].
otherwise, check the last list in acc:
if its length is less than size, append x
otherwise, append a new list [x] to acc
Try doing this by hand on your example to understand all the cases.
This will not be efficient, but it will work.
You don't really need the Ord a constraint.
Checking the accumulator's first sublist's length would lead to information flow from the right and the first chunk ending up the shorter one, potentially, instead of the last. Such function won't work on infinite lists either (not to mention the foldl-based variants).
A standard way to arrange for the information flow from the left with foldr is using an additional argument. The general scheme is
subLists n xs = foldr g z xs n
where
g x r i = cons x i (r (i-1))
....
The i argument to cons will guide its decision as to where to add the current element into. The i-1 decrements the counter on the way forward from the left, instead of on the way back from the right. z must have the same type as r and as the foldr itself as a whole, so,
z _ = [[]]
This means there must be a post-processing step, and some edge cases must be handled as well,
subLists n xs = post . foldr g z xs $ n
where
z _ = [[]]
g x r i | i == 1 = cons x i (r n)
g x r i = cons x i (r (i-1))
....
cons must be lazy enough not to force the results of the recursive call prematurely.
I leave it as an exercise finishing this up.
For a simpler version with a pre-processing step instead, see this recent answer of mine.
Just going to give another answer: this is quite similar to trying to write groupBy as a fold, and actually has a couple gotchas w.r.t. laziness that you have to bear in mind for an efficient and correct implementation. The following is the fastest version I found that maintains all the relevant laziness properties:
splitList :: Int -> [a] -> [[a]]
splitList m xs = snd (foldr f (const ([],[])) xs 1)
where
f x a i
| i <= 1 = let (ys,zs) = a m in ([], (x : ys) : zs)
| otherwise = let (ys,zs) = a (i-1) in (x : ys , zs)
The ys and the zs gotten from the recursive processing of the rest of list indicate the first and the rest of the groups into which the rest of the list will be broken up, by said recursive processing. So we either prepend the current element before that first subgroup if it is still shorter than needed, or we prepend before the first subgroup when it is just right and start a new, empty subgroup.

How can I fold with state in Haskell?

I have a simple function (used for some problems of project Euler, in fact). It turns a list of digits into a decimal number.
fromDigits :: [Int] -> Integer
fromDigits [x] = toInteger x
fromDigits (x:xs) = (toInteger x) * 10 ^ length xs + fromDigits xs
I realized that the type [Int] is not ideal. fromDigits should be able to take other inputs like e.g. sequences, maybe even foldables ...
My first idea was to replace the above code with sort of a "fold with state". What is the correct (= minimal) Haskell-category for the above function?
First, folding is already about carrying some state around. Foldable is precisely what you're looking for, there is no need for State or other monads.
Second, it'd be more natural to have the base case defined on empty lists and then the case for non-empty lists. The way it is now, the function is undefined on empty lists (while it'd be perfectly valid). And notice that [x] is just a shorthand for x : [].
In the current form the function would be almost expressible using foldr. However within foldl the list or its parts aren't available, so you can't compute length xs. (Computing length xs at every step also makes the whole function unnecessarily O(n^2).) But this can be easily avoided, if you re-thing the procedure to consume the list the other way around. The new structure of the function could look like this:
fromDigits' :: [Int] -> Integer
fromDigits' = f 0
where
f s [] = s
f s (x:xs) = f (s + ...) xs
After that, try using foldl to express f and finally replace it with Foldable.foldl.
You should avoid the use of length and write your function using foldl (or foldl'):
fromDigits :: [Int] -> Integer
fromDigits ds = foldl (\s d -> s*10 + (fromIntegral d)) 0 ds
From this a generalization to any Foldable should be clear.
A better way to solve this is to build up a list of your powers of 10. This is quite simple using iterate:
powersOf :: Num a => a -> [a]
powersOf n = iterate (*n) 1
Then you just need to multiply these powers of 10 by their respective values in the list of digits. This is easily accomplished with zipWith (*), but you have to make sure it's in the right order first. This basically just means that you should re-order your digits so that they're in descending order of magnitude instead of ascending:
zipWith (*) (powersOf 10) $ reverse xs
But we want it to return an Integer, not Int, so let's through a map fromIntegral in there
zipWith (*) (powersOf 10) $ map fromIntegral $ reverse xs
And all that's left is to sum them up
fromDigits :: [Int] -> Integer
fromDigits xs = sum $ zipWith (*) (powersOf 10) $ map fromIntegral $ reverse xs
Or for the point-free fans
fromDigits = sum . zipWith (*) (powersOf 10) . map fromIntegral . reverse
Now, you can also use a fold, which is basically just a pure for loop where the function is your loop body, the initial value is, well, the initial state, and the list you provide it is the values you're looping over. In this case, your state is a sum and what power you're on. We could make our own data type to represent this, or we could just use a tuple with the first element being the current total and the second element being the current power:
fromDigits xs = fst $ foldr go (0, 1) xs
where
go digit (s, power) = (s + digit * power, power * 10)
This is roughly equivalent to the Python code
def fromDigits(digits):
def go(digit, acc):
s, power = acc
return (s + digit * power, power * 10)
state = (0, 1)
for digit in digits:
state = go(digit, state)
return state[0]
Such a simple function can carry all its state in its bare arguments. Carry around an accumulator argument, and the operation becomes trivial.
fromDigits :: [Int] -> Integer
fromDigits xs = fromDigitsA xs 0 # 0 is the current accumulator value
fromDigitsA [] acc = acc
fromDigitsA (x:xs) acc = fromDigitsA xs (acc * 10 + toInteger x)
If you're really determined to use a right fold for this, you can combine calculating length xs with the calculation like this (taking the liberty of defining fromDigits [] = 0):
fromDigits xn = let (x, _) = fromDigits' xn in x where
fromDigits' [] = (0, 0)
fromDigits' (x:xn) = (toInteger x * 10 ^ l + y, l + 1) where
(y, l) = fromDigits' xn
Now it should be obvious that this is equivalent to
fromDigits xn = fst $ foldr (\ x (y, l) -> (toInteger x * 10^l + y, l + 1)) (0, 0) xn
The pattern of adding an extra component or result to your accumulator, and discarding it once the fold returns, is a very general one when you're re-writing recursive functions using folds.
Having said that, a foldr with a function that is always strict in its second parameter is a really, really bad idea (excessive stack usage, maybe a stack overflow on long lists) and you really should write fromDigits as a foldl as some of the other answers have suggested.
If you want to "fold with state", probably Traversable is the abstraction you're looking for. One of the methods defined in Traversable class is
traverse :: Applicative f => (a -> f b) -> t a -> f (t b)
Basically, traverse takes a "stateful function" of type a -> f b and applies it to every function in the container t a, resulting in a container f (t b). Here, f can be State, and you can use traverse with function of type Int -> State Integer (). It would build an useless data structure (list of units in your case), but you can just discard it. Here's a solution to your problem using Traversable:
import Control.Monad.State
import Data.Traversable
sumDigits :: Traversable t => t Int -> Integer
sumDigits cont = snd $ runState (traverse action cont) 0
where action x = modify ((+ (fromIntegral x)) . (* 10))
test1 = sumDigits [1, 4, 5, 6]
However, if you really don't like building discarded data structure, you can just use Foldable with somewhat tricky Monoid implementation: store not only computed result, but also 10^n, where n is count of digits converted to this value. This additional information gives you an ability to combine two values:
import Data.Foldable
import Data.Monoid
data Digits = Digits
{ value :: Integer
, power :: Integer
}
instance Monoid Digits where
mempty = Digits 0 1
(Digits d1 p1) `mappend` (Digits d2 p2) =
Digits (d1 * p2 + d2) (p1 * p2)
sumDigitsF :: Foldable f => f Int -> Integer
sumDigitsF cont = value $ foldMap (\x -> Digits (fromIntegral x) 10) cont
test2 = sumDigitsF [0, 4, 5, 0, 3]
I'd stick with first implementation. Although it builds unnecessary data structure, it's shorter and simpler to understand (as far as a reader understands Traversable).

Haskell: How to simplify or eliminate liftM2?

Consider the following code I wrote:
import Control.Monad
increasing :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing n
| n == 1 = [1..9]
| otherwise = do let ps = increasing (n - 1)
let last = liftM2 mod ps [10]
let next = liftM2 (*) ps [10]
alternateEndings next last
where alternateEndings xs ys = concat $ zipWith alts xs ys
alts x y = liftM2 (+) [x] [y..9]
Where 'increasing n' should return a list of n-digit numbers whose numbers increase (or stay the same) from left-to-right.
Is there a way to simplify this? The use of 'let' and 'liftM2' everywhere looks ugly to me. I think I'm missing something vital about the list monad, but I can't seem to get rid of them.
Well, as far as liftM functions go, my preferred way to use those is the combinators defined in Control.Applicative. Using those, you'd be able to write last = mod <$> ps <*> [10]. The ap function from Control.Monad does the same thing, but I prefer the infix version.
What (<$>) and (<*>) goes like this: liftM2 turns a function a -> b -> c into a function m a -> m b -> m c. Plain liftM is just (a -> b) -> (m a -> m b), which is the same as fmap and also (<$>).
What happens if you do that to a multi-argument function? It turns something like a -> b -> c -> d into m a -> m (b -> c -> d). This is where ap or (<*>) come in: what they do is turn something like m (a -> b) into m a -> m b. So you can keep stringing it along that way for as many arguments as you like.
That said, Travis Brown is correct that, in this case, it seems you don't really need any of the above. In fact, you can simplify your function a great deal: For instance, both last and next can be written as single-argument functions mapped over the same list, ps, and zipWith is the same as a zip and a map. All of these maps can be combined and pushed down into the alts function. This makes alts a single-argument function, eliminating the zip as well. Finally, the concat can be combined with the map as concatMap or, if preferred, (>>=). Here's what it ends up:
increasing' :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing' 1 = [1..9]
increasing' n = increasing' (n - 1) >>= alts
where alts x = map ((x * 10) +) [mod x 10..9]
Note that all refactoring I did to get to that version from yours was purely syntactic, only applying transformations that should have no impact on the result of the function. Equational reasoning and referential transparency are nice!
I think what you are trying to do is this:
increasing :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing 1 = [1..9]
increasing n = do p <- increasing (n - 1)
let last = p `mod` 10
next = p * 10
alt <- [last .. 9]
return $ next + alt
Or, using a "list comprehension", which is just special monad syntax for lists:
increasing2 :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing2 1 = [1..9]
increasing2 n = [next + alt | p <- increasing (n - 1),
let last = p `mod` 10
next = p * 10,
alt <- [last .. 9]
]
The idea in the list monad is that you use "bind" (<-) to iterate over a list of values, and let to compute a single value based on what you have so far in the current iteration. When you use bind a second time, the iterations are nested from that point on.
It looks very unusual to me to use liftM2 (or <$> and <*>) when one of the arguments is always a singleton list. Why not just use map? The following does the same thing as your code:
increasing :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing n
| n == 1 = [1..9]
| otherwise = do let ps = increasing (n - 1)
let last = map (flip mod 10) ps
let next = map (10 *) ps
alternateEndings next last
where alternateEndings xs ys = concat $ zipWith alts xs ys
alts x y = map (x +) [y..9]
Here's how I'd write your code:
increasing :: Integer -> [Integer]
increasing 1 = [1..9]
increasing n = let allEndings x = map (10*x +) [x `mod` 10 .. 9]
in concatMap allEndings $ increasing (n - 1)
I arrived at this code as follows. The first thing I did was to use pattern matching instead of guards, since it's clearer here. The next thing I did was to eliminate the liftM2s. They're unnecessary here, because they're always called with one size-one list; in that case, it's the same as calling map. So liftM2 (*) ps [10] is just map (* 10) ps, and similarly for the other call sites. If you want a general replacement for liftM2, though, you can use Control.Applicative's <$> (which is just fmap) and <*> to replace liftMn for any n: liftMn f a b c ... z becomes f <$> a <*> b <*> c <*> ... <*> z. Whether or not it's nicer is a matter of taste; I happen to like it.1 But here, we can eliminate that entirely.
The next place I simplified the original code is the do .... You never actually take advantage of the fact that you're in a do-block, and so that code can become
let ps = increasing (n - 1)
last = map (`mod` 10) ps
next = map (* 10) ps
in alternateEndings next last
From here, arriving at my code essentially involved writing fusing all of your maps together. One of the only remaining calls that wasn't a map was zipWith. But because you effectively have zipWith alts next last, you only work with 10*p and p `mod` 10 at the same time, so we can calculate them in the same function. This leads to
let ps = increasing (n - 1)
in concat $ map alts ps
where alts p = map (10*p +) [y `mod` 10..9]
And this is basically my code: concat $ map ... should always become concatMap (which, incidentally, is =<< in the list monad), we only use ps once so we can fold it in, and I prefer let to where.
1: Technically, this only works for Applicatives, so if you happen to be using a monad which hasn't been made one, <$> is `liftM` and <*> is `ap`. All monads can be made applicative functors, though, and many of them have been.
I think it's cleaner to pass last digit in a separate parameter and use lists.
f a 0 = [[]]
f a n = do x <- [a..9]
k <- f x (n-1)
return (x:k)
num = foldl (\x y -> 10*x + y) 0
increasing = map num . f 1

Haskell, list of natural number

I am an absolute newbie in Haskell yet trying to understand how it works.
I want to write my own lazy list of integers such as [1,2,3,4,5...].
For list of ones I have written
ones = 1 : ones
and when tried, works fine:
*Main> take 10 ones
[1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]
How can I do the same for increasing integers ?
I have tried this but it indeed fails:
int = 1 : head[ int + 1]
And after that how can I make a method that multiplies two streams? such as:
mulstream s1 s2 = head[s1] * head[s2] : mulstream [tail s1] [tail s2]
The reasons that int = 1 : head [ int + 1] doesn't work are:
head returns a single element, but the second argument to : needs to be a list.
int + 1 tries to add a list and a number, which isn't possible.
The easiest way to create the list counting up from 1 to infinity is [1..]
To count in steps other than 1 you can use [firstElement, secondElement ..], e.g. to create a list of all positive odd integers: [1, 3 ..]
To get infinite lists of the form [x, f x, f (f x), f (f (f x)),...] you can use iterate f x, e.g. iterate (*2) 1 will return the list [1, 2, 4, 16,...].
To apply an operation pairwise on each pair of elements of two list, use zipWith:
mulstream s1 s2 = zipWith (*) s1 s2
To make this definition more concise you can use the point-free form:
mulstream = zipWith (*)
For natural numbers you have to use map:
num1 = 1 : map (+1) num1
Or comprehensions:
num2 = 1 : [x+1 | x <- num2]
Or of course:
num3 = [1..]
There is syntax for this in the langauge:
take 10 [1,2..]
=> [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
You can even do different strides:
take 10 [1,3..]
=> [1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19]
I'm not sure if this is what you were asking, but it would seem to me that you wanted to build a list of increasing natural numbers, without relying on any other list. So, by that token, you can do things like
incr a = a : inrc (a+1)
lst = inrc 1
take 3 lst
=> [1,2,3]
That, technically, is called an accumulating function (I believe) and then all we did is make a special case of it easily usable with 'lst'
You can go mad from there, doing things like:
lst = 1 : incr lst where incr a = (head a) + 1 : incr (tail a)
take 3 lst
=> [1,2,3]
and so on, though that probably relies on some stuff that you wont have learned yet (where) - judging by the OP - but it should still read pretty easily.
Oh, right, and then the list multiplication. Well, you can use zipWith (*) as mentioned above, or you could reinvent the wheel like this (it's more fun, trust me :)
lmul a b = (head a * head b) : lmul (tail a) (tail b)
safemul a b
| null a || null b = []
| otherwise
= (head a * head b) : safemul (tail a) (tail b)
The reason for safemul, I believe, you can find out by experimenting with the function lmul, but it has to do with 'tail' (and 'head' as well). The trouble is, there's no case for an empty list, mismatched lists, and so on in lmul, so you're either going to have to hack together various definitions (lmul _ [] = []) or use guards and or where and so on ... or stick with zipWith :)
You can define a list of ones up to a certain number and then sum the first to the second by keeping the former intact (and so on) like this:
ones :: Integer -> [Integer]
ones n
| n <= 0 = []
| otherwise = one n []
where
one 1 a = (1:a)
one n a = one (n-k) (one k a)
where
k = (n-1)
sumOf :: [Integer] -> [Integer]
sumOf l = sof l []
where
sof [] a = a
sof (x:[]) a = (x:a)
sof (x:y:zs) a = sof (x:a) (sof ((x+y):zs) a)
Since they're all ones, you can increment them in any way that you feel like, from left to right, to a middle point and so on, by changing the order of their sum. You can test this up to one hundred (or more) by using:
(sumOf . ones) 100
Edit: for its simplification, read the comments below by Will Ness.

Ways to get the middle of a list in Haskell?

I've just started learning about Functional Programming, using Haskel.
I'm slowly getting through Erik Meijer's lectures on Channel 9 (I've watched the first 4 so far) and in the 4th video Erik explains how tail works, and it fascinated me.
I've tried to write a function that returns the middle of a list (2 items for even lengths, 1 for odd) and I'd like to hear how others would implement it in
The least amount of Haskell code
The fastest Haskell code
If you could explain your choices I'd be very grateful.
My beginners code looks like this:
middle as | length as > 2 = middle (drop 2 (reverse as))
| otherwise = as
Just for your amusement, a solution from someone who doesn't speak Haskell:
Write a recursive function that takes two arguments, a1 and a2, and pass your list in as both of them. At each recursion, drop 2 from a2 and 1 from a1. If you're out of elements for a2, you'll be at the middle of a1. You can handle the case of just 1 element remaining in a2 to answer whether you need 1 or 2 elements for your "middle".
I don't make any performance claims, though it only processes the elements of the list once (my assumption is that computing length t is an O(N) operation, so I avoid it), but here's my solution:
mid [] = [] -- Base case: the list is empty ==> no midpt
mid t = m t t -- The 1st t is the slow ptr, the 2nd is fast
where m (x:_) [_] = [x] -- Base case: list tracked by the fast ptr has
-- exactly one item left ==> the first item
-- pointed to by the slow ptr is the midpt.
m (x:y:_) [_,_] = [x,y] -- Base case: list tracked by the fast ptr has
-- exactly two items left ==> the first two
-- items pointed to by the slow ptr are the
-- midpts
m (_:t) (_:_:u) = m t u -- Recursive step: advance slow ptr by 1, and
-- advance fast ptr by 2.
The idea is to have two "pointers" into the list, one that increments one step at each point in the recursion, and one that increments by two.
(which is essentially what Carl Smotricz suggested)
Two versions
Using pattern matching, tail and init:
middle :: [a] -> [a]
middle l#(_:_:_:_) = middle $ tail $ init l
middle l = l
Using length, take, signum, mod, drop and div:
middle :: [a] -> [a]
middle xs = take (signum ((l + 1) `mod` 2) + 1) $ drop ((l - 1) `div ` 2) xs
where l = length xs
The second one is basically a one-liner (but uses where for readability).
I've tried to write a function that returns the middle of a list (2 items for even lengths, 1 for odd) and I'd like to hear how others would implement it in
The right datastructure for the right problem. In this case, you've specified something that only makes sense on a finite list, right? There is no 'middle' to an infinite list. So just reading the description, we know that the default Haskell list may not be the best solution: we may be paying the price for the laziness even when we don't need it. Notice how many of the solutions have difficulty avoiding 2*O(n) or O(n). Singly-linked lazy lists just don't match a quasi-array-problem too well.
Fortunately, we do have a finite list in Haskell: it's called Data.Sequence.
Let's tackle it the most obvious way: 'index (length / 2)'.
Data.Seq.length is O(1) according to the docs. Data.Seq.index is O(log(min(i,n-i))) (where I think i=index, and n=length). Let's just call it O(log n). Pretty good!
And note that even if we don't start out with a Seq and have to convert a [a] into a Seq, we may still win. Data.Seq.fromList is O(n). So if our rival was a O(n)+O(n) solution like xs !! (length xs), a solution like
middle x = let x' = Seq.fromList x in Seq.index(Seq.length x' `div` 2)
will be better since it would be O(1) + O(log n) + O(n), which simplifies to O(log n) + O(n), obviously better than O(n)+O(n).
(I leave as an exercise to the reader modifying middle to return 2 items if length be even and 1 if length be odd. And no doubt one could do better with an array with constant-time length and indexing operations, but an array isn't a list, I feel.)
Haskell solution inspired by Carl's answer.
middle = m =<< drop 1
where m [] = take 1
m [_] = take 2
m (_:_:ys) = m ys . drop 1
If the sequence is a linked list, traversal of this list is the dominating factor of efficiency. Since we need to know the overall length, we have to traverse the list at least once. There are two equivalent ways to get the middle elements:
Traverse the list once to get the length, then traverse it half to get at the middle elements.
Traverse the list in double steps and single steps at the same time, so that when the first traversal stops, the second traversal is in the middle.
Both need the same number of steps. The second is needlessly complicated, in my opinion.
In Haskell, it might be something like this:
middle xs = take (2 - r) $ drop ((div l 2) + r - 1) xs
where l = length xs
r = rem l 2
middle xs =
let (ms, len) = go xs 0 [] len
in ms
go (x:xs) i acc len =
let acc_ = case len `divMod` 2 of
(m, 0) -> if m == (i+1) then (take 2 (x:xs))
else acc
(m, 1) -> if m == i then [x]
else acc
in go xs (i+1) acc_ len
go [] i acc _ = (acc,i)
This solution traverses the list just once using lazy evaluation. While it traverses the list, it calculates the length and then backfeeds it to the function:
let (ms, len) = go xs 0 [] len
Now the middle elements can be calculated:
let acc' = case len `divMod` 2 of
...
F# solution based on Carl's answer:
let halve_list l =
let rec loop acc1 = function
| x::xs, [] -> List.rev acc1, x::xs
| x::xs, [y] -> List.rev (x::acc1), xs
| x::xs, y::y'::ys -> loop (x::acc1) (xs, ys)
| [], _ -> [], []
loop [] (l, l)
It's pretty easy to modify to get the median elements in the list too:
let median l =
let rec loop acc1 = function
| x::xs, [] -> [List.head acc1; x]
| x::xs, [y] -> [x]
| x::xs, y::y'::ys -> loop (x::acc1) (xs, ys)
| [], _ -> []
loop [] (l, l)
A more intuitive approach uses a counter:
let halve_list2 l =
let rec loop acc = function
| (_, []) -> [], []
| (0, rest) -> List.rev acc, rest
| (n, x::xs) -> loop (x::acc) (n - 1, xs)
let count = (List.length l) / 2
loop [] (count, l)
And a really ugly modification to get the median elements:
let median2 l =
let rec loop acc = function
| (n, [], isEven) -> []
| (0, rest, isEven) ->
match rest, isEven with
| x::xs, true -> [List.head acc; x]
| x::xs, false -> [x]
| _, _ -> failwith "Should never happen"
| (n, x::xs, isEven) -> loop (x::acc) (n - 1, xs, isEven)
let len = List.length l
let count = len / 2
let isEven = if len % 2 = 0 then true else false
loop [] (count, l, isEven)
Getting the length of a list requires traversing its entire contents at least once. Fortunately, it's perfectly easy to write your own list data structure which holds the length of the list in each node, allowing you get get the length in O(1).
Weird that this perfectly obvious formulation hasn't come up yet:
middle [] = []
middle [x] = [x]
middle [x,y] = [x,y]
middle xs = middle $ init $ tail xs
A very straightforward, yet unelegant and not so terse solution might be:
middle :: [a] -> Maybe [a]
middle xs
| len <= 2 = Nothing
| even len = Just $ take 2 . drop (half - 1) $ xs
| odd len = Just $ take 1 . drop (half) $ xs
where
len = length xs
half = len `div` 2
This iterates twice over the list.
mid xs = m where
l = length xs
m | l `elem` [0..2] = xs
m | odd l = drop (l `div` 2) $ take 1 $ xs
m | otherwise = drop (l `div` 2 - 1) $ take 2 $ xs
I live for one liners, although this example only works for odd lists. I just want to stretch my brain! Thank you for the fun =)
foo d = map (\(Just a) -> a) $ filter (/=Nothing) $ zipWith (\a b -> if a == b then Just a else Nothing) (Data.List.nub d) (Data.List.nub $ reverse d)
I'm not much of a haskeller myself but I tried this one.
First the tests (yes, you can do TDD using Haskell)
module Main
where
import Test.HUnit
import Middle
main = do runTestTT tests
tests = TestList [ test1
, test2
, test3
, test4
, test_final1
, test_final2
]
test1 = [0] ~=? middle [0]
test2 = [0, 1] ~=? middle [0, 1]
test3 = [1] ~=? middle [0, 1, 2]
test4 = [1, 2] ~=? middle [0, 1, 2, 3]
test_final1 = [3] ~=? middle [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
test_final2 = [3, 4] ~=? middle [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
And the solution I came to:
module Middle
where
middle a = midlen a (length a)
midlen (a:xs) 1 = [a]
midlen (a:b:xs) 2 = [a, b]
midlen (a:xs) lg = midlen xs (lg - (2))
It will traverse list twice, once for getting length and a half more to get the middle, but I don't care it's still O(n) (and getting the middle of something implies to get it's length, so no reason to avoid it).
My solution, I like to keep things simple:
middle [] = []
middle xs | odd (length xs) = [xs !! ((length xs) `div` 2)]
| otherwise = [(xs !! ((length xs) `div` 2)),(reverse $ xs) !! ((length xs)`div` 2)]
Use of !! in Data.List as the function to get the value at a given index, which in this case is half the length of the list.
Edit: it actually works now
I like Svante's answer. My version:
> middle :: [a] -> [a]
> middle [] = []
> middle xs = take (r+1) . drop d $ xs
> where
> (d,r) = (length xs - 1) `divMod` 2
Here is my version. It was just a quick run up. I'm sure it's not very good.
middleList xs#(_:_:_:_) = take (if odd n then 1 else 2) $ drop en xs
where n = length xs
en = if n < 5 then 1 else 2 * (n `div` 4)
middleList xs = xs
I tried. :)
If anyone feels like commenting and telling me how awful or good this solution is, I would deeply appreciate it. I'm not very well versed in Haskell.
EDIT: Improved with suggestions from kmc on #haskell-blah
EDIT 2: Can now accept input lists with a length of less than 5.
Another one-line solution:
--
middle = ap (take . (1 +) . signum . (`mod` 2) . (1 +) . length) $ drop =<< (`div` 2) . subtract 1 . length
--