I'm learning Clojure. Quite basic task is to generate Fibonacci sequence. I end up with pretty much copy of the imperative solution (and list is reversed, huh):
(defn n-fib [n]
(if (= n 1) '(1)
(loop [i 2 l '(1 1)]
(if (= i n)
l
(recur (inc i) (cons (+ (fst l) (snd l)) l))))))
What is the better way, more functional, concise? Lazy sequences? How to use them? For example, in Haskell using laziness I can write one liner:
fib = 1 : 1 : zipWith + (tail fib)
Note that Haskell solution offers infinite sequence (laziness...). If Clojure both eager and lazy solutions can be (even like get n-length list) I would like to know both.
Update: Another solution I got yields not reversed list, but it uses stack to generate it:
(defn n-fib [n]
(defn gen [i a b]
(if (= i 0)
()
(cons (+ a b) (gen (dec i) b (+ a b)))))
(gen n 0 1))
You might want to look at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming/Examples/Lazy_Fibonacci
The equivalent to your lazy Haskell solution is this
(def fib (lazy-cat [1 1] (map + (rest fib) fib)))
This one doesn't generate the whole sequence, but it is good at finding the nth fibonacci number with an iterative algorithm. I'm only just learning clojure, so I'd be interested what people think about this approach and if there's something wrong with it. It's not pretty, and it's not clever, but it does seem to work.
(defn fib [n]
(if (< n 2)
n
(loop [i 1
lst 0
nxt 1]
(if (>= i n)
nxt
(recur (inc i) nxt (+' lst nxt))))))
Related
Working on this program that's supposed to take a vector of integers as input and return the one with the longest integer. Example (vector 20 738 5942 125) and would return 4 as its the longest one. I'm pretty sure I have most of this done the only issue I have is in the conditional as I have to call an outside function (count-integers), this is what I have so far:
(require while)
(define (empty-VINT? low high) (> low high))
(define (count-integers n)
(cond [(< n 10) 1]
(else(+ 1 (count-integers [/ n 10])))))
(define (count-digits V)
(local [
(define x (void))
(define accum (void))
(define largest 0)]
(begin
(set! x (vector-length V))
(set! accum 0)
(while (< accum (vector-length V))
(cond [(empty-VINT? x accum) accum]
[(> (count-integers (vector-ref V accum) largest)
(add1 x) accum(vector-ref V accum))]
[else add1 accum])))))
Right now when its run, I get this message: cond: expected a clause with a question and an answer, but found a clause with only one part. Any suggestions would be great, thanks
First of all, it's not clear what do you want to return. 4 isn't the longest integer (that's 5942), 4 is a maximal digit count among integers in given vector.
Secondly, your code isn't idiomatic and without your comment, it's very hard to say what's going on. Programming in functional languages requies functional way of thinking. Forget about while, set!, void, local and nested define and instead spend some time learning about apply, map, filter and foldl.
I would solve this problem like this:
(define (digits number)
(string-length (number->string number)))
(define (max-digit-count vec)
(apply max (map digits (vector->list vec))))
(max-digit-count (vector 20 738 5942 125))
=> 4
From comments:
Design and implement a function to find the number of digits in the longest integer in a (vectorof integer) ...
use ... while loops
So a plan (design) might be:
count-digits: integer -> natural
max-digit-count: (vectorof integer) -> natural
..something while something max count-digits something ???
Implementing count-digits seems straightforward (but
integers can be negative, and in Racket (integer? 123.000) is true).
#lang racket
(define (count-digits int) ;; Integer -> Natural
;; produce count of digits in int
(string-length (number->string (abs (exact-truncate int)))))
As #Gwang-Jin Kim mentions, while could be defined:
(define-syntax-rule (while condition body ...)
;; From: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10968212/while-loop-macro-in-drracket
(let loop ()
(when condition
body ...
(loop))))
and then one could use it:
(define (max-digit-count vec) ;; VectorOfInteger -> Natural
;; produce maximum of digit counts of vec elements
(define vx 0)
(define acc 0)
(while (< vx (vector-length vec))
(set! acc (max accum (count-digits (vector-ref vec vx))))
(set! vx (add1 vx)))
acc)
(max-digit-count (vector 20 -738.00 5942 125)) ;=> 4
One of the problems with while is that it can't produce a value (where would it come
from if the condition is false on entry?)
If one "enhanced" while a bit:
(define-syntax-rule (while< x-id limit a-id a-init update)
;; "while loop" incrementing x-id from 0 to limit-1, updating a-id
(let loop ([x-id 0] [a-id a-init])
(if (< x-id limit)
(loop (add1 x-id) update)
a-id)))
max-digit-count could be neater:
(define (max-digit-count vec) ;; VectorOfInteger -> Natural
;; produce maximum of digit counts of vec elements
(while< vx (vector-length vec)
acc 0 (max acc (count-digits (vector-ref vec vx)))))
#MartinPuda's answer is quite good.
I would have defined:
(define (digits n (acc 0))
(if (< n 1)
acc
(digits (/ n 10) (+ acc 1))))
(define (max-digits lst)
(digits (car (sort lst >))))
To apply it:
(max-digits (vector->list (vector 20 738 5942 125)))
Why you should not use while
Using while would force you to mutate variable values. It is much more "natural" for lisp languages to follow the functional style (recursive functions instead of while loops or other loops) rather than the imperative style with mutation of variables.
That is why while is not in the lisp languages.
But if you want to use it:
(define-syntax-rule (while condition body ...)
;; From: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10968212/while-loop-macro-in-drracket
(let loop ()
(when condition
body ...
(loop))))
(define (digits n (acc 0))
(cond ((< n 1) acc)
(else (digits (/ n 10) (+ acc 1)))))
(define (max-digits lst)
(let ((max-digit 0))
(while (not (null? lst))
(let ((digit (digits (car lst))))
(when (< max-digit digit)
(set! max-digit digit))
(set! lst (cdr lst))))
max-digit))
Then you can try:
> (max-digits (vector->list v))
4
> (max-digits '(1111 123456 2345 34))
6
Prefer let over define
Why? Because if you use let, you can control the scope of the to-be-mutated variable very precisely. You can define in your definition, from where on your variable canNOT have any effect on your code (since its scope ended at some point). While with define you don't have this fine-grained control. (Or this control is implicit not explicite like with let). You could delete/unbind the variable explicitely but that is rarely done in real life.
Therefore, in Lisp, for variable declarations use whenever possible let, especially whenever you deal with mutated variables.
All imperative = declarations should be in Lisp languages let expressions!
You can use function arguments instead of let-definitions, because they are anyway implemented using lets
Just you save syntactically some lines - and the fewer lines you occupy the cleaner the code.
#lang racket
(define (digits n)
(string-length (number->string n)))
(define (max-digit a b)
(if (< (digits a) (digits b)) b a))
(define (max-digits lst (res ""))
(while (not (null? lst))
(set! res (max-digit res (car lst)))
(set! lst (cdr lst)))
(digits res))
I know that there are multiple ways to solve permutations using Clojure.
I have tried creating a DCG (definite clause grammar) using Core.Logic but
the DCG part of the library is too experimental and didn't work.
In the code below I try two different approaches. One is a list comprehension (commented out), which is similar to the way I would solve this problem in Haskell.
The second approach uses MapCat to apply cons/first to each return value from the
recursive call to permutation. Remove item makes sure that I don't use the same letter more than once for each position.
Can someone please explain what is wrong with the list comprehension approach and what is wrong with the MapCat approach. It is much easier to reason about this kind of problem in Haskell - is there some perspective I am missing about Clojure?
(defn remove-item [xs]
(remove #{(first xs)} xs )
)
(defn permutation [xs]
(if (= (count xs) 1)
xs
;(for [x xs y (permutation (remove-item xs))
; :let [z (map concat y)]]
; z)
(mapcat #(map cons first (permutation (remove-item %)) ) xs)
)
)
Edit: #thumbnail solved the MapCat sub-problem in the comments already
We can simplify the permutation function to
(defn permutation [xs]
(if (= (count xs) 1)
xs
(for [x xs
y (permutation (remove-item xs))]
(map concat y))))
Attempting to use it on anything plural produces java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Don't know how to create ISeq from: ... whatever you are trying to permute.
There are two errors:
permutation should return a sequence of sequences, even when there is
only one of them; so xs should be (list xs). This is what causes the exception.
The permutation for a given x from xs and, given that, a permutation y of xs without xis just (cons x y).
With these corrected, we have
(defn permutation [xs]
(if (= (count xs) 1)
(list xs)
(for [x xs
y (permutation (remove-item x xs))]
(cons x y))))
For example,
(permutation (range 3))
;((0 1 2) (0 2 1) (1 0 2) (1 2 0) (2 0 1) (2 1 0))
The above works only if all the permuted things are different. At the other extreme ...
(permutation [1 1 1])
;()
Also,
count scans the whole of a sequence. To find out if there is only
one element, (seq (rest xs)) is faster than (= (count xs) 1).
And the remove in remove-item scans the whole sequence. There is
little we can do to mend this.
If we know that we are dealing with distinct things, it is simpler and faster to deal with them as a set:
(defn perm-set [xs]
(case (count xs)
0 '()
1 (list (seq xs))
(for [x xs, y (perm-set (disj xs x))]
(cons x y)))
It works for empty sets too.
count is instant and disj is almost constant time, so this is
faster.
Thus:
(perm-set (set '()))
;()
(perm-set (set (range 3)))
;((0 1 2) (0 2 1) (1 0 2) (1 2 0) (2 0 1) (2 1 0))
We can add support for duplicates by working with the index of the items in the original sequence. The function append-index returns a new sequence where the index and value are now in a vector. For example '(\a \b \c) -> '([0 \a] [1 \b] [2 \c] [3 \a]).
You then work with this sequence within the for loop, taking the index of the item when we want to remove it from the original and taking the value when we cons it to the tail sequence.
(defn remove-nth [coll n]
(into (drop (inc n) coll) (reverse (take n coll))))
(defn append-index [coll]
(map-indexed #(conj [%1] %2) coll))
(defn permutation [xs]
(let [i-xs (append-index xs)]
(if (= (count xs) 1)
(list xs)
(for [x i-xs
y (permutation (remove-nth xs (first x)))]
(cons (last x) y)))))
Thanks to the previous post, I was struggling with the permutation problem myself and had not considered using a for comprehension.
So this is my first time programming in clojure and I am running into some issues with stackoverflow with my program. This program basically tries to find all the possible solutions to the N-queens problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_queens_puzzle
When I call sol-count (finds number of solutions for a given N) on 10 or higher I get a stack overflow
(defn qextends?
"Returns true if a queen at rank extends partial-sol."
[partial-sol rank]
(if (>= (count partial-sol) 1)
(and
(not= (first partial-sol) (- rank (count partial-sol)))
(not= (first partial-sol) (+ rank (count partial-sol)))
(not= (first partial-sol) rank)
(qextends? (rest partial-sol) rank))
true)
)
(defn qextend-helper [n x partial-sol partial-sol-list]
(if (<= x n)
(if (qextends? partial-sol x)
(qextend-helper n (inc x) partial-sol (conj partial-sol-list (conj partial-sol x)))
(qextend-helper n (inc x) partial-sol partial-sol-list)
)
partial-sol-list)
)
(defn qextend
"Given a vector *partial-sol-list* of all partial solutions of length k,
returns a vector of all partial solutions of length k + 1.
"
[n partial-sol-list]
(if (>= (count partial-sol-list) 1)
(vec (concat (qextend-helper n 1 (first partial-sol-list) [])
(qextend n (rest partial-sol-list))))
nil))
(defn sol-count-helper
[n x partial-sol-list]
(if (<= x (- n 1))
(sol-count-helper n (+ 1 x) (qextend n partial-sol-list))
(qextend n partial-sol-list))
)
(defn sol-count
"Returns the total number of n-queens solutions on an n x n board."
[n]
(count (sol-count-helper n 1 [[]]))
)
Completing dizzystar's answer:
Most of your recursions can be recurred: You can put recur inside if, and hence under and and or, macros which expand to if forms. For example ...
(defn qextend-helper [n x partial-sol partial-sol-list]
(if (<= x n)
(if (qextends? partial-sol x)
(recur n (inc x) partial-sol (conj partial-sol-list (conj partial-sol x)))
(recur n (inc x) partial-sol partial-sol-list))
partial-sol-list)
)
But the recursive call in qextend:
(vec (concat ( ...)
(qextend n (rest partial-sol-list))))
... can't be dealt with by recur, since it is buried in function calls, to concat and vec.
You can solve this problem by returning a lazy sequence, so making the partial-sol-list argument lazy:
get rid of vec - return the sequence - and
replace concat with lazy-cat.
The resulting function is
(defn qextend [n partial-sol-list]
(if (seq partial-sol-list)
(lazy-cat (qextend-helper n 1 (first partial-sol-list) [])
(qextend n (rest partial-sol-list)))
nil))
You also have to avoid counting (and hence realizing) the lazy sequence: so useseq instead to test whether there is anything in partial-sol-list.
It works!
=> (sol-count 11)
2680
For starters, Clojure does not have TCO like other lisps. To mitigate this, Clojure offers loop and recur. In Clojure and other lisps, you generally do not have explicit returns, instead, the focus is on returning values.
I fixed up the qextend-helper to give you a start. I tested a few of your answers against the snippet that I replaced here, and they all resolve to the same solution. You still can't go past 10 even with this snippet inside of it, but if you continue to remove all the tail call recursions, you should be able to get past the stackoverflow errors:
(defn qextend-helper [n x partial-sol partial-sol-list]
(loop [n n
x x
partail-sol partial-sol
partial-sol-list partial-sol-list]
(when (and (<= x n)
(qextends? partail-sol x))
(recur n (inc x) partail-sol (conj partial-sol-list (conj partial-sol x))))))
I should point out also that the above isn't great Clojure either. There are many other solutions online that are less LOC and more Clojure-y, but since you are starting down this route, I am simply attempting to encourage you to remove the errors that you are running into. In this case, removing the tail-calls is a good place to start. With that said, there is nothing that would stop you from using for or other constructs and I encourage you to look into other options after you solved this.
When using recur, resist the temptation to put recur at the end of a function to simulate TCO:
(defn my-funct [x]
.....
(recur x))
Finally, this indention style and putting parens on their own lines does not improve readability.:
(qextend-helper n (inc x) partial-sol partial-sol-list)
)
partial-sol-list)
)
I implemented a naive solution for printing a Pascal's Triangle of N depth which I'll include below. My question is, in what ways could this be improved to make it more idiomatic? I feel like there are a number of things that seem overly verbose or awkward, for example, this if block feels unnatural: (if (zero? (+ a b)) 1 (+ a b)). Any feedback is appreciated, thank you!
(defn add-row [cnt acc]
(let [prev (last acc)]
(loop [n 0 row []]
(if (= n cnt)
row
(let [a (nth prev (- n 1) 0)
b (nth prev n 0)]
(recur (inc n) (conj row (if (zero? (+ a b)) 1 (+ a b)))))))))
(defn pascals-triangle [n]
(loop [cnt 1 acc []]
(if (> cnt n)
acc
(recur (inc cnt) (conj acc (add-row cnt acc))))))
(defn pascal []
(iterate (fn [row]
(map +' `(0 ~#row) `(~#row 0)))
[1]))
Or if you're going for maximum concision:
(defn pascal []
(->> [1] (iterate #(map +' `(0 ~#%) `(~#% 0)))))
To expand on this: the higher-order-function perspective is to look at your original definition and realize something like: "I'm actually just computing a function f on an initial value, and then calling f again, and then f again...". That's a common pattern, and so there's a function defined to cover the boring details for you, letting you just specify f and the initial value. And because it returns a lazy sequence, you don't have to specify n now: you can defer that, and work with the full infinite sequence, with whatever terminating condition you want.
For example, perhaps I don't want the first n rows, I just want to find the first row whose sum is a perfect square. Then I can just (first (filter (comp perfect-square? sum) (pascal))), without having to worry about how large an n I'll need to choose up front (assuming the obvious definitions of perfect-square? and sum).
Thanks to fogus for an improvement: I need to use +' rather than just + so that this doesn't overflow when it gets past Long/MAX_VALUE.
(defn next-row [row]
(concat [1] (map +' row (drop 1 row)) [1]))
(defn pascals-triangle [n]
(take n (iterate next-row '(1))))
Not as terse as the others, but here's mine:)
(defn A []
(iterate
(comp (partial map (partial reduce +))
(partial partition-all 2 1) (partial cons 0))
[1]))
Coming from imperative programming languages, I am trying to wrap my head around Clojure in hopes of using it for its multi-threading capability.
One of the problems from 4Clojure is to write a function that generates a list of Fibonacci numbers of length N, for N > 1. I wrote a function, but given my limited background, I would like some input on whether or not this is the best Clojure way of doing things. The code is as follows:
(fn fib [x] (cond
(= x 2) '(1 1)
:else (reverse (conj (reverse (fib (dec x))) (+ (last (fib (dec x))) (-> (fib (dec x)) reverse rest first))))
))
The most idiomatic "functional" way would probably be to create an infinite lazy sequence of fibonacci numbers and then extract the first n values, i.e.:
(take n some-infinite-fibonacci-sequence)
The following link has some very interesting ways of generating fibonnaci sequences along those lines:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming/Examples/Lazy_Fibonacci
Finally here is another fun implementation to consider:
(defn fib [n]
(let [next-fib-pair (fn [[a b]] [b (+ a b)])
fib-pairs (iterate next-fib-pair [1 1])
all-fibs (map first fib-pairs)]
(take n all-fibs)))
(fib 6)
=> (1 1 2 3 5 8)
It's not as concise as it could be, but demonstrates quite nicely the use of Clojure's destructuring, lazy sequences and higher order functions to solve the problem.
Here is a version of Fibonacci that I like very much (I took the implementation from the clojure wikibook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming)
(def fib-seq (lazy-cat [0 1] (map + (rest fib-seq) fib-seq)))
It works like this: Imagine you already have the infinite sequence of Fibonacci numbers. If you take the tail of the sequence and add it element-wise to the original sequence you get the (tail of the tail of the) Fibonacci sequence
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 ...
1 1 2 3 5 8 ...
-----------------
1 2 3 5 8 13 ...
thus you can use this to calculate the sequence. You need two initial elements [0 1] (or [1 1] depending on where you start the sequence) and then you just map over the two sequences adding the elements. Note that you need lazy sequences here.
I think this is the most elegant and (at least for me) mind stretching implementation.
Edit: The fib function is
(defn fib [n] (nth fib-seq n))
Here's one way of doing it that gives you a bit of exposure to lazy sequences, although it's certainly not really an optimal way of computing the Fibonacci sequence.
Given the definition of the Fibonacci sequence, we can see that it's built up by repeatedly applying the same rule to the base case of '(1 1). The Clojure function iterate sounds like it would be good for this:
user> (doc iterate)
-------------------------
clojure.core/iterate
([f x])
Returns a lazy sequence of x, (f x), (f (f x)) etc. f must be free of side-effects
So for our function we'd want something that takes the values we've computed so far, sums the two most recent, and returns a list of the new value and all the old values.
(fn [[x y & _ :as all]] (cons (+ x y) all))
The argument list here just means that x and y will be bound to the first two values from the list passed as the function's argument, a list containing all arguments after the first two will be bound to _, and the original list passed as an argument to the function can be referred to via all.
Now, iterate will return an infinite sequence of intermediate values, so for our case we'll want to wrap it in something that'll just return the value we're interested in; lazy evaluation will stop the entire infinite sequence being evaluated.
(defn fib [n]
(nth (iterate (fn [[x y & _ :as all]] (cons (+ x y) all)) '(1 1)) (- n 2)))
Note also that this returns the result in the opposite order to your implementation; it's a simple matter to fix this with reverse of course.
Edit: or indeed, as amalloy says, by using vectors:
(defn fib [n]
(nth (iterate (fn [all]
(conj all (->> all (take-last 2) (apply +)))) [1 1])
(- n 2)))
See Christophe Grand's Fibonacci solution in Programming Clojure by Stu Halloway. It is the most elegant solution I have seen.
(defn fibo [] (map first (iterate (fn [[a b]] [b (+ a b)]) [0 1])))
(take 10 (fibo))
Also see
How can I generate the Fibonacci sequence using Clojure?