Clojure Passing Individual Variables to Function - clojure

I am trying to pass some vectors containing a list of nodes in to a function in clojure the function works if i was to type the variables in but i am not sure how to pass a single variable from each vector in at a time.
(def ItemPickUp [:a1 :Mail])
(def ItemDestinations [:Storage :a1])
(def Robot {[ItemPickUp] [ItemDestinations]})
(defn shortestPath [g start dest]
(let [not-destination? (fn [[vertex _]] (not= vertex dest))]
(-> (shortest-paths g start)
(->> (drop-while not-destination?))
first
(nth 2))))
(apply shortestPath G (apply first Robot)((apply second Robot)))
I need to pass a variable from the ItemPickUp and ItemDestination into shortestPath using robot but instead of passing one of the variable in it passes both :a1 and :Mail and vice versa for the other one.
How do i go about passing each variable in individually so the first two variables for the first iteration is :a1 and :Storage and so on?
Thanks.

In Clojure this is normally done with map - it takes a function f and any number of collections and lazily produces a sequence of (f (first coll1) (first coll2)...), (f (second coll1) (second coll2)...)...
So it should just be
(map (partial shortestPath G) ItemPickup ItemDestinations)
(Some other functional languages distinguish one-collection mapping from multi-collection zipping - I believe Haskell is influential here. It needs this because its functions have fixed arities, so you have zipWith,zipWith3 etc. Having the parenteses to indicate number of arguments means Lisps don't have to deal with that.)

In case of (def Robot [[ItemPickUp] [ItemDestinations]]) and you want to use it you can do:
(apply map (partial shortestPath G) Robot)
Apply in this case will reduce to:
(map (partial shortestPath G) (first Robot) (second Robot))
and of course will throw ArityException if Robot has other than two elements.
You can think about apply as moving parentheses (function call) to his first argument and taking out parentheses from last argument (if some).

Related

Clojure: How to determine if a nested list contains non-numeric items?

I need to write a Clojure function which takes an unevaluated arbitrarily deep nesting of lists as input, and then determines if any item in the list (not in function position) is non-numeric. This is my first time writing anything in Clojure so I am a bit confused. Here is my first attempt at making the function:
(defn list-eval
[x]
(for [lst x]
(for [item lst]
(if(integer? item)
(println "")
(println "This list contains a non-numeric value")))))
I tried to use a nested for-loop to iterate through each item in every nested list. Trying to test the function like so:
=> (list-eval (1(2 3("a" 5(3)))))
results in this exception:
ClassCastException java.lang.Long cannot be cast to clojure.lang.IFn listeval.core/eval7976 (form-init4504441070457356195.clj:1)
Does the problem here lie in the code, or in how I call the function and pass an argument? In either case, how can I make this work as intended?
This happens because (1 ..) is treated as calling a function, and 1 is a Long, and not a function. First you should change the nested list to '(1(2 3("a" 5(3)))). Next you can change your function to run recursively:
(defn list-eval
[x]
(if (list? x)
(for [lst x] (list-eval lst))
(if (integer? x)
(println "")
(println "This list contains a non-numeric value"))))
=> (list-eval '(1(2 3("a" 5(3)))))
There is a cool function called tree-seq that does all the hard work for you in traversing the structure. Use it then remove any collections, remove all numbers, and check if there is anything left.
(defn any-non-numbers?
[x]
(->> x
(tree-seq coll? #(if (map? %) (vals %) %))
(remove (some-fn coll? number?))
not-empty
boolean))
Examples:
user=> (any-non-numbers? 1)
false
user=> (any-non-numbers? [1 2])
false
user=> (any-non-numbers? [1 2 "sd"])
true
user=> (any-non-numbers? [1 2 "sd" {:x 1}])
true
user=> (any-non-numbers? [1 2 {:x 1}])
false
user=> (any-non-numbers? [1 2 {:x 1 :y "hello"}])
true
If you want to consider map keys as well, just change (vals %) to (interleave (keys %) (vals %)).
quoting
As others have mentioned, you need to quote a list to keep it from being evaluated as
code. That's the cause of the exception you're seeing.
for and nesting
for will only descend to the nesting depth you tell it to. It is not a for loop,
as you might expect, but a sequence comprehension, like the the python list comprehension.
(for [x xs, y ys] y) will presume that xs is a list of lists and flatten it.
(for [x xs, y ys, z zs] z) Is the same but with an extra level of nesting.
To walk down to any depth, you'd usually use recursion.
(There are ways to do this iteratively, but they're more difficult to wrap your head around.)
side effects
You're doing side effects (printing) inside a lazy sequence. This will work at the repl,
but if you're not using the result anywhere, it won't run and cause great confusion.
It's something every new clojurian bumps into at some point.
(doseq is like for, but for side effects.)
The clojure way is to separate functions that work with values from functions that
"do stuff", like printing to the console of launching missiles, and to keep the
side effecting functions as simple as possible.
putting it all together
Let's make a clear problem statement: Is there a non number anywhere inside an
arbitrarily nested list? If there is, print a message saying that to the console.
In a lot of cases, when you'd use a for loop in other langs reduce is what you want in clojure.
(defn collect-nested-non-numbers
;; If called with one argument, call itself with empty accumulator
;; and that argument.
([form] (collect-nested-non-numbers [] form))
([acc x]
(if (coll? x)
;; If x is a collection, use reduce to call itself on every element.
(reduce collect-nested-non-numbers acc x)
;; Put x into the accumulator if it's a non-number
(if (number? x)
acc
(conj acc x)))))
;; A function that ends in a question mark is (by convention) one that
;; returns a boolean.
(defn only-numbers? [form]
(empty? (collect-nested-non-numbers form)))
;; Our function that does stuff becomes very simple.
;; Which is a good thing, cause it's difficult to test.
(defn warn-on-non-numbers [form]
(when-not (only-numbers? form)
(println "This list contains a non-numeric value")))
And that'll work. There already exists a bunch of things that'll help you walk a nested structure, though, so you don't need to do it manually.
There's the clojure.walk namespace that comes with clojure. It's for when you have
a nested thing and want to transform some parts of it. There's tree-seq which is explained
in another answer. Specter is a library which is
a very powerful mini language for expressing transformations of nested structures.
Then there's my utils library comfy which contains reduce versions of the
functions in clojure.walk, for when you've got a nested thing and want to "reduce" it to a single value.
The nice thing about that is that you can use reduced which is like the imperative break statement, but for reduce. If it finds a non-number it doesn't need to keep going through the whole thing.
(ns foo.core
(:require
[madstap.comfy :as comfy]))
(defn only-numbers? [form]
(comfy/prewalk-reduce
(fn [ret x]
(if (or (coll? x) (number? x))
ret
(reduced false)))
true
form))
Maybe by "any item in the list (not in function position)" you meant this?
(defn only-numbers-in-arg-position? [form]
(comfy/prewalk-reduce
(fn [ret x]
(if (and (list? x) (not (every? (some-fn number? list?) (rest x))))
(reduced false)
ret))
true
form))

Clojure: pass value if it passes predicate truth test

Is it possible to remove the let statement / avoid the intermediate 'x' in the following code?:
(let [x (f a)]
(when (pred? x) x))
I bumped into this problem in the following use case:
(let [coll (get-collection-somewhere)]
(when (every? some? coll) ; if the collection doesn't contain nil values
(remove true? coll))) ; remove all true values
So if the collection is free of nil values, only not-true values remain, like numbers, strings, or whatever.
So, I'm looking for something like this:
(defn pass-if-true [x pred?]
(when (pred? x) x))
Assuming that you don't want to define that pass-if-true function, the best you can do is an anonymous function:
(#(when (every? some? %)
(remove true? %))
(get-collection-somewhere))
You could also extract the predicate and transformation into parameters:
(#(when (%1 %3) (%2 %3))
(partial every? some?)
(partial remove true?)
(get-collection-somewhere))
The let form is necessary to prevent your collection-building function from running twice:
(f a) or (get-collection-somewhere)
This is a typical idiom and you are doing it correctly.
Of course, you don't need the let if you already have the collection and are not building inside this expression.
However, you may wish to see when-let:
https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/when-let
It can save some keystrokes in some circumstances, but this isn't one of them.

Clojure - operate on each item in list of lists

I'm working on my first-ever functional program in Clojure. I'm having some issues figuring out how to step through each item in a list, in each list in a list, and operate on it while keeping return values. I'm sure the issue comes from my unfamiliarity with Clojure and functional programming and was hoping someone could explain the best method to do the following:
psuedo-code algorithm:
for each lst in list
for each item in lst
return_values.append = do_something(item)
I first tried nesting two doseq functions and then calling my do_something function, which worked to call the function on the item, but didn't save my return values. I then tried a for and cons to an empty list, but was unable to get my return values outside of the for.
Would it be possible/preferable to break the list of lists down first? Could I still get a list of lists of return values?
In the end, I would like the result to be a list of lists of return values to match the input list of lists.
If anyone could explain the best method for doing this in Clojure, and why, it would be much appreciated.
Nested for loop will do the trick:
(for [lst my-list]
(for [item lst] (do_something item)))
It will take nested list my-list (list of lists) and convert it into another nested list by applying do_something to each element.
In clojure, for returns a list of values already, so there is no need to handle it yourself. Furthermore, since all data structures in clojure are immutable, you can't do this by appending elements to initially empty list with cons.
If you have a deeply nested list and you want to keep its structure, but transform the values, you can use clojure.walk/postwalk to operate on each value, e.g.:
(def nested '(1 (2 3 (4 5)) 6))
(defn transform-values [coll f]
(clojure.walk/postwalk #(if (not (list? %))
(f %)
%)
coll))
(transform-values nested inc)
=> (2 (3 4 (5 6)) 7)
You can, of course, pass any function to transform-values.
This can be done as a simple recursive walk. The first implementation that comes to mind for this would be the following for sequences:
(defn deep-walk
[f data]
(map (fn [s] (if (seq? s)
(deep-walk f s)
(f s)))
data))
And this slight variation for vectors:
(defn vec-deep-walk
[f data]
(vec (map (fn [s] (if (vector? s)
(vec-deep-walk f s)
(f s)))
data)))
Just a quick test with the following:
(vec-deep-walk (partial + 1) [1 [2 3] 4 [5 [6 7]]])
Gives the following output:
[2 [3 4] 5 [6 [7 8]]]
The walk functions take two parameters, the first is a function that takes a single parameter. This will be called for each non-seq/vector element in your data, which is passed as the second parameter. The results will be returned in a nested structure that is identical to the input structure.

Variadic function with keyword arguments

I'm a newbie to Clojure and I was wondering if there is a way to define a function that can be called like this:
(strange-adder 1 2 3 :strange true)
That is, a function that can receive a variable number of ints and a keyword argument.
I know that I can define a function with keyword arguments this way:
(defn strange-adder
[a b c & {:keys [strange]}]
(println strange)
(+ a b c))
But now my function can only receive a fixed number of ints.
Is there a way to use both styles at the same time?
unfortunately, no.
The & destructuring operator uses everything after it on the argument list so it does not have the ability to handle two diferent sets of variable arity destructuring groups in one form.
one option is to break the function up into several arities. Though this only works if you can arrange it so only one of them is variadic (uses &). A more universal and less convenient solution is to treat the entire argument list as one variadic form, and pick the numbers off the start of it manually.
user> (defn strange-adder
[& args]
(let [nums (take-while number? args)
opts (apply hash-map (drop-while number? args))
strange (:strange opts)]
(println strange)
(apply + nums)))
#'user/strange-adder
user> (strange-adder 1 2 3 4 :strange 4)
4
10
Move the variadic portion to the the tail of the argument list and pass the options as a map:
(defn strange-adder [{:keys [strange]} & nums]
(println strange)
(apply + nums))
(strange-adder {:strange true} 1 2 3 4 5)
There is no formal support that I know of, but something like this should be doable:
(defn strange-adder
[& args]
(if (#{:strange} (-> args butlast last))
(do (println (last args))
(apply + (drop-last 2 args)))
(apply + args)))
I don't know if this can be generalized (check for keywords? how to expand to an arbitrary number of final arguments?). One option may be putting all options in a hashmap as the final argument, and checking if the last argument is a hashmap (but this would not work for some functions that expect arbitrary arguments that could be hashmaps).

Is it possible to set a common binding for all implementations in a multi-signature function?

(This is a question regarding style. I am aware this can be done with a bunch of conditionals, multimethods, etc.)
In the following function, null-vector is defined on each implementation. How can I set it once for the entire function? In general, is it possible to set a common binding to all implementations?
A closure won't work, since it null-vector needs an "argument", but I suppose I could partial it. However, that would still need computation of the size parameter. I'd like to avoid repeating code, obviously.
(defn path
"Returns a lazy sequence of vectors representing a monotonic path
walked over coll in n-dimensional space, where n is the cardinality
of coll's alphabet."
([coll]
(let [alphabet (set coll)
cardinality (count alphabet)
alpha-map (apply hash-map (interleave alphabet (range cardinality)))
null-vector (vec (repeat cardinality 0))]
(path coll null-vector alpha-map)))
([coll alpha-map]
(let [null-vector (vec (repeat (count (keys alpha-map)) 0))]
(path coll null-vector alpha-map)))
([coll origin alpha-map]
(let [null-vector (vec (repeat (count origin) 0))
unit-vector #(assoc null-vector (alpha-map %) 1)
sum-vectors #(vec (map + %1 %2))]
(reductions sum-vectors origin (map unit-vector coll)))))
I would create a "private" helper function:
(defn- null-copy-vector [coll]
(vec (repeat (count coll) 0)))
and then just call it in each branch of the function:
(defn path
"Returns a lazy sequence of vectors representing a monotonic path
walked over coll in n-dimensional space, where n is the cardinality
of coll's alphabet."
([coll]
(let [alphabet (set coll)
alpha-map (zipmap alphabet (iterate inc 0)) ;; note 1
null-vector (null-copy-vector alphabet)]
(path coll null-vector alpha-map null-vector)))
([coll alpha-map]
(let [null-vector (null-copy-vector alpha-map)] ;; note 2
(path coll null-vector alpha-map null-vector)))
([coll origin alpha-map]
(path coll origin alpha-map (null-copy-vector origin)))
([coll origin alpha-map null-vector]
(let [unit-vector #(assoc null-vector (alpha-map %) 1)
sum-vectors #(vec (map + %1 %2))]
(reductions sum-vectors origin (map unit-vector coll)))))
It may be this isn't satisfying to you because null-copy-vector isn't "inside" the overall function here, but I think this is pretty idiomatic. On a function that did not take multiple arities, I might use letfn to separate out an "internal" function but that won't work here.
Breaking things up like this also lets you a) reuse the basic building block functions elsewhere and b) lets you test in smaller chunks. You might want to skip the defn- and just use defn to make testing easier (although it is possible to test defn- with a bit more work).
I also broke out a new 4-arg form that takes the null-vector as the last arg, letting you pass it in directly if you know it so that you can avoid re-creating it from an already null vector. If you wanted to hide that 4-arg form, you could pull it into a separate defn- helper function.
Unrelated notes:
I modified your first branch to a simpler (imho) impl using zipmap and an infinite sequence.
Instead of (count (keys map)), just doing (count map) is sufficient (the count here is inside your helper function).