Given a list, I would like to produce a second list of elements selected from the first one.
For example:
let l1 = [1..4]
let n = [0; 2]
l1.[n]
should return 1 and 3, the first and third element of l1.
Unfortunately, it returns an error:
error FS0001: This expression was expected to have type
int but here has type int list
Now, I wonder, does exist a way to pass an argument n representing a list or, even better, an expression?
F# doesn't offer syntactical support for that sort of indexing. You can ask for a continuous slice of an array like below, but it doesn't cover your exact scenario.
let a = [|1 .. 4|]
let b = a.[0..2]
// returns [|1; 2; 3|]
You can easily write a function for that though:
let slice<'a> (indices: int list) (arr: 'a array) =
[| for idx in indices do yield arr.[idx] |]
slice [0; 2] a
// returns [| 1; 3 |]
I'm leaving proper handling of out-of-bounds access as an exercise ;)
With indexed properties, you should be able to define this for your types: just define a member Item with get(indexes) which accepts a list/array. But standard lists and arrays already have Item defined, and you can't have two at once...
I solved it this way:
List.map (fun index -> l1.[index]) n
It's inefficient for large lists, but works for me.
Related
In OCaml, suppose I have a string list as follows:
let ls : string list = ["A"; "A"; "B"; "B"; "A"; "Y"; "Y"; "Y"] ;;
I'm having trouble writing a function that calculates how many times an element occurs consecutively and also pairs up that element with its frequency. For instance, given the above list as input, the function should return [("A", 2); ("B", 2), ("A", 1), ("Y", 3)].
I've tried looking for some hints elsewhere but almost all other similar operations are done using int lists, where it is easy to simply add numbers up. But here, we cannot add strings.
My intuition was to use something like fold_left in some similar fashion as below:
let lis : int list = [1;2;3;4;5]
let count (lis : int list) = List.fold_left (fun x y -> x + y) (0) (lis)
which is essentially summing all the elements cumulatively from left to right. But, in my case, I don't want to cumulatively sum all the elements, I just need to count how many times an element occurs consecutively. Some advice would be appreciated!
This is obviously a homework assignment, so I will just give a couple of hints.
When you get your code working, it won't be adding strings (or any other type) together. It will be adding ints together. So you might want to look back at those examples on the net again :-)
You can definitely use fold_left to get an answer. First, note that the resultl is a list of pairs. The first element of each pair can be any type, depending on the type of the original list. The second element in each pair is an int. So you have a basic type that you're working with: ('a * int) list.
Imagine that you have a way to "increment" such a list:
let increment (list: ('a * int) list) value =
(* This is one way to think of your problem *)
This function looks for the pair in the list whose first element is equal to value. If it finds it, it returns a new list where the associated int is one larger than before. If it doesn't find it, it returns a new list with an extra element (value, 1).
This is the basic operation you want to fold over your list, rather than the + operation of your example code.
I am to use combinators and no for/while loops, recursion or defined library functions from F#'s List module, except constructors :: and []
Ideally I want to implement map
I am trying to write a function called llength that returns the list of the lengths of the sublists. For example llength [[1;2;3];[1;2];[1;2;3]] should return [3;2,3]. I also have function length that returns the length of a list.
let Tuple f = fun a b -> f (a, b)
let length l : int =
List.fold (Tuple (fst >> (+) 1)) 0 l
currently have
let llength l : int list =
List.map (length inner list) list
Not sure how I should try accessing my sublists with my restraints and should I use my other method on each sublist? any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!
Since this is homework, I don't want to just give you a fully coded solution, but here are some hints:
First, since fold is allowed you could implement map via fold. The folding function would take the list accumulated "so far" and prepend the next element transformed with mapping function. The result will come out reversed though (fold traverses forward, but you prepend at every step), so perhaps that wouldn't work for you if you're not allowed List.rev.
Second - the most obvious, fundamental way: naked recursion. Here's the way to think about it: (1) when the argument is an empty list, result should be an empty list; (2) when the argument is a non-empty list, the result should be length of the argument's head prepended to the list of lengths of the argument's tail, which can be calculated recursively. Try to write that down in F#, and there will be your solution.
Since you can use some functions that basically have a loop (fold, filter ...), there might be some "cheated & dirty" ways to implement map. For example, via filter:
let mymap f xs =
let mutable result = []
xs
|> List.filter (fun x ->
result <- f x :: result
true)
|> ignore
result |> List.rev
Note that List.rev is required as explained in the other answer.
I want to convert a sequence to a list using List.init. I want at each step to retrieve the i th value of s.
let to_list s =
let n = length s in
List.init n
(fun _i ->
match s () with
| Nil -> assert false
| Cons (a, sr) -> a)
This is giving me a list initialized with the first element of s only. Is it possible in OCaml to initialize the list with all the values of s?
It may help to study the definition of List.init.
There are two variations depending on the size of the list: a tail recursive one, init_tailrec_aux, whose result is in reverse order, and a basic one, init_aux. They have identical results, so we need only look at init_aux:
let rec init_aux i n f =
if i >= n then []
else
let r = f i in
r :: init_aux (i+1) n f
This function recursively increments a counter i until it reaches a limit n. For each value of the counter that is strictly less than the limit, it adds the value given by f i to the head of the list being produced.
The question now is, what does your anonymous function do when called with different values of i?:
let f_anon =
(fun _i -> match s () with
|Nil -> assert false
|Cons(a, sr) -> a)
Regardless of _i, it always gives the head of the list produced by s (), and if s () always returns the same list, then f_anon 0 = f_anon 1 = f_anon 2 = f_anon 3 = hd (s ()).
Jeffrey Scofield's answer describes a technique for giving a different value at each _i, and I agree with his suggestion that List.init is not the best solution for this problem.
The essence of the problem is that you're not saving sr, which would let you retrieve the next element of the sequence.
However, the slightly larger problem is that List.init passes only an int as an argument to the initialization function. So even if you did keep track of sr, there's no way it can be passed to your initialization function.
You can do what you want using the impure parts of OCaml. E.g., you could save sr in a global reference variable at each step and retrieve it in the next call to the initialization function. However, this is really quite a cumbersome way to produce your list.
I would suggest not using List.init. You can write a straightforward recursive function to do what you want. (If you care about tail recursion, you can write a slightly less straightforward function.)
using a recursive function will increase the complexity so i think that initializing directly the list (or array) at the corresponding length will be better but i don't really know how to get a different value at each _i like Jeffrey Scofield said i am not really familiar with ocaml especially sequences so i have some difficulties doing that:(
My basic idea is to implement a bubble sort of type ('a list -> 'a list). I use variables which are sorted and result. If I change some of elements in the list, sorted becomes 1. Otherwise, sorted remains 0. Result is one cycle of the comparison.
I think there is something wrong with my sorted variable. Can anyone figure out what the problem is?
let rec sort (l: int list) : int list =
let sorted=0 in
let result = match l with
| []->[]
| x::xs-> if xs=[] then x
else let y::ys = xs in
if x<y then x::sort(xs)
else let sorted=1 in
y::sort(x::ys)
in
if sorted=0 then result
else sort(result)
It seems to me you're trying to use sorted as a mutable variable. OCaml variables are immutable. Once you bind a variable to a value, the binding can't be changed. Each of your let sorted = statements defines a new variable named sorted. So your last test will always show sorted to be equal to 0. It is testing the first definition of sorted, which can never have any other value than 0.
As Jeffrey said, OCaml values are immutable. That is why your program does not work as expected.
But there are other problems with your code:
sorted should have type bool, not int. One the pros of OCaml is that it has a strong type system, so use it.
To deconstruct list, you should use pattern matching only if xs=[] then x else let y::ys = xs in is not not the good way of doing it (and OCaml should warn you that your pattern matching is not exhaustive). You should add other cases to your pattern matching instead.
Like this:
| [] -> []
| x::[] -> x
| x::y::ys -> ...
I need a function that recursively returns (not prints) all values in a list with each iteration. However, every time I try programming this my function returns a list instead.
let rec elements list = match list with
| [] -> []
| h::t -> h; elements t;;
I need to use each element each time it is returned in another function that I wrote, so I need these elements one at a time, but I can't figure this part out. Any help would be appreciated.
Your function is equivalent to :
let rec elements list =
match list with
| [] -> []
| h :: t -> elements t
This happens because a ; b evaluates a (and discards the result) and then evaluates and returns b. Obviously, this is in turn equivalent to:
let elements (list : 'a list) = []
This is not a very useful function.
Before you try solving this, however, please understand that Objective Caml functions can only return one value. Returning more than one value is impossible.
There are ways to work around this limitation. One solution is to pack all the values you wish to return into a single value: a tuple or a list, usually. So, if you need to return an arbitrary number of elements, you would pack them together into a list and have the calling code process that list:
let my_function () = [ 1 ; 2; 3; 4 ] in (* Return four values *)
List.iter print_int (my_function ()) (* Print four values *)
Another less frequent solution is to provide a function and call it on every result:
let my_function action =
action 1 ;
action 2 ;
action 3 ;
action 4
in
my_function print_int
This is less flexible, but arguably faster, than returning a list : lists can be filtered, sorted, stored...
Your question is kind of confusing - you want a function that returns all the values in a list. Well the easiest way of returning a variable number of values is using a list! Are you perhaps trying to emulate Python generators? OCaml doesn't have anything similar to yield, but instead usually accomplishes the same by "passing" a function to the value (using iter, fold or map).
What you have currently written is equivalent to this in Python:
def elements(list):
if(len(list) == 0):
return []
else:
list[0]
return elements(list[1:])
If you are trying to do this:
def elements(list):
if(len(list) > 0):
yield list[0]
# this part is pretty silly but elements returns a generator
for e in elements(list[1:]):
yield e
for x in elements([1,2,3,4,5]):
dosomething(x)
The equivalent in OCaml would be like this:
List.iter dosomething [1;2;3;4;5]
If you are trying to determine if list a is a subset of list b (as I've gathered from your comments), then you can take advantage of List.mem and List.for_all:
List.for_all (fun x -> List.mem x b) a
fun x -> List.mem x b defines a function that returns true if the value x is equal to any element in (is a member of) b. List.for_all takes a function that returns a bool (in our case, the membership function we just defined) and a list. It applies that function to each element in the list. If that function returns true for every value in the list, then for_all returns true.
So what we have done is: for all elements in a, check if they are a member of b. If you are interested in how to write these functions yourself, then I suggest reading the source of list.ml, which (assuming *nix) is probably located in /usr/local/lib/ocaml or /usr/lib/ocaml.