I'm writing a simple code generating a simple list with 5 numbers whose first variable should be positive and I'm trying to understand why this code fails
test([H|T]) :- H > 0, length(T,4).
when I call with
length(X,5), test(X).
it shows me the following error:
ERROR: Arguments are not sufficiently instantiated
When I debug the code, the H variable in test isn't instantiated.
Anyone know why?
The issue here is that your rule for test([H|T]) doesn't describe in Prolog that H is a positive integer. It only tests if H > 0, which fails since H has not instantiation. Just attempting to compare an uninstantiated variable with a number (H > 0 in this case) doesn't cause Prolog to assume you intended H to be a number, and further, doesn't instantiate H.
Further, your rule for test/1 doesn't describe the rest of the list (T) other than to force that it be length 4. Since you're query establishes the rule that the length of the original list be 5, this stipulation is redundant.
You appear to be wanting to define test(L) such that it means L is an arbitrary list of positive integers. This is generally done using CLP(FD):
:- use_module(library(clpfd)).
test(X) :- X ins 1..10000.
This rule says that X is a list whose values are in the range 1 to 10000. The appropriate query to generate the lists of length 5 would then be:
?- length(X, 5), test(X), label(X).
X = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1] ;
X = [1, 1, 1, 1, 2] ;
X = [1, 1, 1, 1, 3] ;
X = [1, 1, 1, 1, 4] ;
X = [1, 1, 1, 1, 5] ;
...
If you want to restrict it further and say that elements need to be unique, you can use all_different/1:
test(X) :- X ins 1..10000, all_different(X).
?- length(X, 5), test(X), label(X).
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] ;
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 6] ;
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 7] ;
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 8] ;
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 9] ;
X = [1, 2, 3, 4, 10] ;
...
I'm having some trouble figuring out how to switch numbers in a long list.
For example if were to have a list:
numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
and wanted to instead print it in the form of:
numbers_2 = [2,1,4,3,6,5,8,7]
such that each pair would be switched, using a for-loop. I thought about doing something like:
for i in range(0, len(numbers), 2):
But wasn't really able to get much further.
Loop every second index and swap two adjacent items:
numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
for i in range(1, len(numbers), 2):
numbers[i-1], numbers[i] = numbers[i], numbers[i-1]
Not sure about the other answers, but this one will also work with a list of an uneven length, and leave the last item untouched.
Take 2 halves, and rearrange them:
numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
first = numbers[::2]
second = numbers[1::2]
numbers_2 = sum(map(list, zip(second, first)), [])
Try this:
def swap_array_elements (a):
for i in range (0, len(a) - 1, 2):
a[i], a[i +1] = a[i + 1], a[i]
return a
a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
print (swap_array_elements (a))
# prints: [1, 0, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8]
I am trying to learn about arrays. I know that python has lists, not arrays, but the idea is the same. I have a list of lists setup like an array, and I am trying to modify them for random art fun, but I can only get one resulting random number out of this piece of code.
##prior list creation code making a large list of zeros called "array"###
while 3 not in array:
i= random.randint(1,9)
j= random.randint(1,28)
if (i%3)!=0 and (j%7)!=0:
if 5 in array:
array[i][j]=3
return array
elif 3 in array:
array[i][j]=4
return array
else:
array[i][j]=5
amy=(i, j)
return array
continue
##the resulting list called "array" does not chnange any zero to any number except one to "5"##
I have cut the code that made an array filled with zeros. The only number that will show up is the 5... ideally, I would have each number only show up once with each run, but in different spots
What am I doing wrong? I don't fully understand arrays, so that might be it, but I'm having trouble searching what I think the problem might be. Any help you can provide would be great!
Edit:
Sorry about forgetting, the array is the proper size to hold the data (9 rows by 28columns), and it isn't throwing any errors or exceptions... that should have been in there before I posted.
It's hard to tell exactly what you are asking, but I think you just wanted to randomly assign the numbers 3, 4, and 5 somewhere inside your matrix with the condition that i is not divisible by 3 and j is not divisible by 7. If that's what you want, then this should do it:
import random
array = [ [ 0 for j in range(28) ] for i in range(9) ]
for n in [3, 4, 5]:
while True:
i = random.randint(1, 9)
if i % 3 != 0:
break
while True:
j = random.randint(1, 28)
if j % 7 != 0:
break
array[i][j] = n
print('\n'.join(str(a) for a in array))
So let's talk about how to get to this answer. First off, we want a way to generate random numbers until a condition happens. In most languages, this would involve a do-while loop, but Python doesn't have those. However, we can make something that is equivalent to a do-while loop using just a while loop:
# This says to run this loop *forever*
while True:
# do something here
pass # This means "do nothing" in Python
if condition:
# This says if the previously mentioned condition
# is True then we will stop executing the
# currently containing loop.
break
So this construct, that I just showed is a building block which you can use to make a loop that runs until a condition is met.
Let's see how that fits in your original example. We want a random number in the range [1, 9) that is not divisible by 3. The random.randint function will provide a random number in that range, but it doesn't guarantee that it is not divisible by 3. So we need to enforce that constraint ourselves. One way to accomplish that is to simply generate a new number if the constraint is not met.
So now we can use the previously discussed loop construct to build a loop that runs until we have a number that is not divisible by 3:
while True:
i = random.randint(1, 9)
if i % 3 != 0:
break
I'm sure you can do the logical replacement in the previous loop to see how it fits the other example.
So now we can talk a little bit more about where you went wrong in your original code, and how you can prevent from making those same mistakes in the future.
Let's talk about this line first:
while 3 not in array:
First of all, when developing code, it's a very good idea to try things out at the Python interactive interpreter prompt. This is especially true when you are trying out a feature of the language for the first time. As I showed in my comment, the condition in your while loop is always False. The reason for that is clear if you try it out in the interpreter:
>>> 3 in [[3],[3],[3]]
False
The in operator only looks one level deep into a list. Also, it's always a good idea to start small when testing things out interactively. Notice I'm using a list of only 3 elements with nested lists containing only 1 element each instead of your original example of a 9 element list with nested lists containing 28 elements.
Now, another approach that we could have taken to make your loop condition change over time would be to make a "recursive" version of the in operator. Alternatively, we could have just hard coded it to expect a list that contains lists. I'm going to take this second approach because it is simpler, and I don't know if you are already familiar with recursion, and this is already a long explanation.
def contains2d(outer, element):
"""Expects a 2D-array-like list. Returns True if any of the inner
sub-lists within the outer list contain element.
"""
return any([e in inner for inner in outer])
If we try this function out, we'll see that it behaves as you originally expected the in operator to behave:
>>> contains2d([[3],[3],[3]], 3)
True
>>> contains2d([[0],[0],[3]], 3)
True
>>> contains2d([[0],[0],[0]], 3)
False
So now let's talk about your misunderstanding of the continue keyword. A while loop repeats automatically. You don't need to use continue inside of a while loop for it to repeat. The continue keyword is only used to skip the rest of the body of a loop. This is generally used if you have some special case for which you don't want to do the normal loop processing. Here's a reasonable example of how you might use continue:
>>> for i in range(10):
... if i % 3 == 0:
... continue
... print(i)
...
1
2
4
5
7
8
Notice that it really doesn't make any sense to put continue at the end of a loop:
while True:
print("This loop runs forever!")
# The following continue is useless
continue
Alright, so now that we have contains2d, we can start to think about what we want. In your example, you say you want the array variable to contain 3,4, and 5 at the end of your loop. Again, let's start small and see if the condition is True under the desired circumstances. We know from earlier that contains2d([[0],[0],[3]], 3) == True, so that is an insufficient loop termination criteria. Remember, we want the loop to only be true when all conditions have been met. So that means we need to use the and operator
>>> contains2d([[0],[0],[3]], 3) and contains2d([[0],[0],[3]], 4) and contains2d([[0],[0],[3]], 5)
False
>>> contains2d([[4],[0],[3]], 3) and contains2d([[4],[0],[3]], 4) and contains2d([[4],[0],[3]], 5)
False
>>> contains2d([[4],[5],[3]], 3) and contains2d([[4],[5],[3]], 4) and contains2d([[4],[5],[3]], 5)
True
Note that this condition is very ugly and hard to write. Ideally, we'd probably like to refactor it. One way to do that is to use the built-in all function. I'll let you experiment with it on your own, but here's the end result:
>>> all([contains2d([[4],[5],[3]], e) for e in [3,4,5]])
True
That's much shorter and much more clear. So, moving on, we want to run this loop as long as that condition is not True:
while not all([contains2d(array, e) for e in [3,4,5]]):
# ...
The next two lines are actually just fine, but I would format them according to PEP-8:
while not all([contains2d(array, e) for e in [3,4,5]]):
i = random.randint(1, 9)
j = random.randint(1, 28)
# ...
If we replace the in conditions with our contains2d function, then we're almost getting to a working solution:
while not all([contains2d(array, e) for e in [3,4,5]]):
i = random.randint(1, 9)
j = random.randint(1, 28)
if i % 3 != 0 and j % 7 != 0:
if contains2d(array, 5):
# ...
elif contains2d(array, 3):
# ...
else:
# ...
The assignments within the if conditions are perfectly fine as well. However, when you have a return inside of a loop, that will exit the loop and exit the entire containing function. In this code you don't actually have a containing function, so that will just end your program. That's not what you want to do here, so let's just drop all of those return statements:
while not all([contains2d(array, e) for e in [3,4,5]]):
i = random.randint(1, 9)
j = random.randint(1, 28)
if i % 3 != 0 and j % 7 != 0:
if contains2d(array, 5):
array[i][j] = 3
elif contains2d(array, 3):
array[i][j] = 4
else:
array[i][j] = 5
This program is very close to being right. However, the innermost if block is using some odd logic. If you run this progam using my initialization and output, you'll see something like this:
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
[0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
It actually took me a minute to figure out what was going wrong, but the key obsevation is that the first time through the loop for which you get a successful pair of i and j, you'll take the else branch randomly placing a 5 in the nested list. The next successful time you get inside the if, you'll take the first branch which randomly places a 3 inside the nested list. However, here's where things go sideways. On the next succssful iteration, you'll still take the first branch, so you'll randomly place another 3 inside the nested list. You will keep doing this for several more iterations. Eventually, you will overwrite the previously written 5. At that point, the first condition will no longer hold and instead you will start taking the second branch which randomly places a 4 in the nested list. This branch will continue to be taken since 5 is no longer present in the nested list. Eventually, you will overwrite all of the previously written 3s with 4s in the nested list. At that point, the second branch condition will no longer hold, and you will land on the else branch again, writing a 5 to the nested list. Finally, the first condition will hold again, so on the next successful iteration, you'll write a 3 again, and as long as you don't get unlucky, that will miss the 5 and you'll now have met the termination criteria for the outer while loop leaving you with a bunch of 4s and just a single 3 and a single 5.
Maybe this is what you wanted to do, but it didn't seem that way from your question, so let's assume you really just wanted one of each of the numbers present in the nested list. If that's the case, we can easily correct the previous program. We just need to fix the conditions for each of the if cases. We only want to take the first branch when a 5 is present, but a 3 is not present. Thus that gives us if contains2d(array, 5) and not contains2d(array, 3):. Furthermore, we only want to take the second branch if 5 and 3 are both already present. Thus that gives us elif contains2d(array, 5) and contains2d(array, 3):. Finally, we only want to take the last branch if a 5 is not present. Thus we must change the else to another elif giving us elif not contains2d(array, 5):. Putting this all together gives us:
array = [ [ 0 for j in range(28) ] for i in range(9) ]
while not all([contains2d(array, e) for e in [3,4,5]]):
i = random.randint(1, 9)
j = random.randint(1, 28)
if i % 3 != 0 and j % 7 != 0:
if contains2d(array, 5) and not contains2d(array, 3):
array[i][j] = 3
elif contains2d(array, 5) and contains2d(array, 3):
array[i][j] = 4
elif not contains2d(array, 5):
array[i][j] = 5
print('\n'.join(str(a) for a in array))
This actually works like my original answer. However, it's not very satisfactory because the logic inside the if block is quite complicated. There's actually very rigid sequence of events that must happen. Whenever you think of a sequence of things, you should think of a list. In this case, the sequence goes like this, we assign 5, then we assign 3, then finally we assign 4. That can be represented as this list: [5, 3, 4]. If we reorder things a bit, we can get the following program:
array = [ [ 0 for j in range(28) ] for i in range(9) ]
for n in [5, 3, 4]:
while not contains2d(array, n):
i = random.randint(1, 9)
j = random.randint(1, 28)
if i % 3 != 0 and j % 7 != 0:
array[i][j] = n
print('\n'.join(str(a) for a in array))
This particular program does have a flaw in that it's possible for one of the later values to overwrite one of the earlier values, and thus the postcondition of all the numbers being present could possibly not hold if your random numbers happen to collide. In fact, my initial answer has this same issue. I'll leave fixing that as an exercise for you to figure out.
I have a set of lists that I want to compare firstly the sum values of the lists and then individual elements in the event of two or more lists having the same value.
my_list1 = [2, 3, 2, 4, 5]
my_list2 = [1, 3, 2, 3, 2]
my_list3 = [1, 1, 2, 2, 2]
my_list4 = [3, 2, 2, 4, 5]
Logic testing for an outright winner is fine but the problem I am having is isolating the lists in the event of a draw – So in the scenario above my_list1 and my_list4 would be isolated for further logic testing as their totals both come to 16.
This is what I have so far
my_list1=[1,1,2,2,2]
my_list2=[1,1,1,1,2]
my_list3=[2,2,1,1,2]
my_list1Total=sum(my_list1)
my_list2Total=sum(my_list2)
my_list3Total=sum(my_list3)
if my_list1Total>my_list2Total and my_list1Total>my_list3Total:
print("List one has the higest score")
elif my_list2Total>my_list1Total and my_list2Total>my_list3Total:
print("List two has the higest score")
elif my_list3Total>my_list2Total and my_list3Total>my_list1Total:
print("List three has the higest score")
else:
print("Draw")
##so now I want to compare the lists with the same total but this time by the first element in the list. In this case it would be my_list1[0] and my_list3[0] that would be compared next. The winner having the highest value in position 0 of the drawing lists
I suggest creating a single list which holds all of your lists. Then you can use max on that list to find the largest element. Or, if you want the index of the list and not just its value, you can write a max-like method and use that instead.
#like the built-in function `max`,
#but returns the index of the largest element
#instead of the largest element itself.
def index_of_max(seq, key=lambda item:item):
return max(range(len(seq)), key=lambda idx: key(seq[idx]))
lists = [
[2, 3, 2, 4, 5],
[1, 3, 2, 3, 2],
[1, 1, 2, 2, 2],
[3, 2, 2, 4, 5]
]
idx = index_of_max(lists, key=lambda item: (sum(item), item[0]))
#add one to this result because Python lists are zero indexed,
#but the original numbering scheme started at one.
print "List # {} is largest.".format(idx+1)
Result:
List # 4 is largest.
A little explanation about key: it's a function that you pass to max, that it uses to determine the comparative value of two items in the sequence. It calls key(someItem) on both items, and whichever item has a larger result, is considered the maximum item between the two of them. The key function I used here returns a tuple. Due to the way tuple comparison works in Python, comparison is done by sum first, then using the first element of each list as a tie breaker.
If you're thinking "but what if the first elements are also the same? I want to use each following item as a tie breaker", then you can modify the key to compare all of them in turn.
idx = index_of_max(lists, key=lambda item: [sum(item)]+item)
So I've been playing around with python and noticed something that seems a bit odd. The semantics of -1 in selecting from a list don't seem to be consistent.
So I have a list of numbers
ls = range(1000)
The last element of the list if of course ls[-1] but if I take a sublist of that so that I get everything from say the midpoint to the end I would do
ls[500:-1]
but this does not give me a list containing the last element in the list, but instead a list containing everything UP TO the last element. However if I do
ls[0:10]
I get a list containing also the tenth element (so the selector ought to be inclusive), why then does it not work for -1.
I can of course do ls[500:] or ls[500:len(ls)] (which would be silly). I was just wondering what the deal with -1 was, I realise that I don't need it there.
In list[first:last], last is not included.
The 10th element is ls[9], in ls[0:10] there isn't ls[10].
If you want to get a sub list including the last element, you leave blank after colon:
>>> ll=range(10)
>>> ll
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ll[5:]
[5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ll[:]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
I get consistent behaviour for both instances:
>>> ls[0:10]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ls[10:-1]
[10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]
Note, though, that tenth element of the list is at index 9, since the list is 0-indexed. That might be where your hang-up is.
In other words, [0:10] doesn't go from index 0-10, it effectively goes from 0 to the tenth element (which gets you indexes 0-9, since the 10 is not inclusive at the end of the slice).
It seems pretty consistent to me; positive indices are also non-inclusive. I think you're doing it wrong. Remembering that range() is also non-inclusive, and that Python arrays are 0-indexed, here's a sample python session to illustrate:
>>> d = range(10)
>>> d
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> d[9]
9
>>> d[-1]
9
>>> d[0:9]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
>>> d[0:-1]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
>>> len(d)
10
when slicing an array;
ls[y:x]
takes the slice from element y upto and but not including x. when you use the negative indexing it is equivalent to using
ls[y:-1] == ls[y:len(ls)-1]
so it so the slice would be upto the last element, but it wouldn't include it (as per the slice)
-1 isn't special in the sense that the sequence is read backwards, it rather wraps around the ends. Such that minus one means zero minus one, exclusive (and, for a positive step value, the sequence is read "from left to right".
so for i = [1, 2, 3, 4], i[2:-1] means from item two to the beginning minus one (or, 'around to the end'), which results in [3].
The -1th element, or element 0 backwards 1 is the last 4, but since it's exclusive, we get 3.
I hope this is somewhat understandable.