How to pass a parameter which isn't used in invoking function? - haskell

I wrote two functions. My first function receives two parameters, f a function, and n. f is arbitrary function and n is a stop value.
My first function looks like so
series f 0 = (f 0)
series f n = seriesInt f n 0 0
-- Not a main question, but how can both these functions series and
-- seriesInt be written as one function?
seriesInt f n acc i | i <= n = seriesInt f n (acc + (f i)) (i+1)
| otherwise = acc
My second function is this
taylor i x | x == 1 = 1
| otherwise = ((-1)^i / (myFac t)) * (x^t)
where
t = (2 * i + 1)
For this function I need two parameters, i and x.
Parameter i will be passed from my series function, but how can I pass parameter x to this function?
I'm supposing, I need a Lambda expression for that?

Yes, you pass it a lambda function, (\ i -> taylor i x), like so:
foo n x = seriesInt (\ i -> taylor i x) n 0 0
You could use as e.g. map (foo 1000) [1..10].
The lambda function is defined in the scope of x, so it can use it. A new lambda function is defined by the call to foo for each x that foo gets called with.

Related

Just Int to Int

This code either returns the first factor of an Integer starting from 2 or returns nothing if it's a prime.
Example: firstFactorOf 24 returns "Just 2"
Example: firstFactorOf 11 returns "Nothing"
My question is, how would I return the value 2 rather than "Just 2" if there is a factor or return the value x if there is no factor.
firstFactorOf x
| m == Nothing = m
| otherwise = m
where m =(find p [2..x-1])
p y = mod x y == 0
//RETURNS:
ghci> firstFactorOf 24
Just 2
ghci> firstFactorOf 11
Nothing
Haskell is statically typed, meaning that you can define a function Maybe a -> a, but the question is what to do with the Nothing case.
Haskell has two functions that can be helpful here: fromMaybe and fromJust:
fromMaybe :: a -> Maybe a -> a
fromJust :: Maybe a -> a
fromJust simply assumes that you will always provide it a Just x, and return x, in the other case, it will throw an exception.
fromMaybe on the other hand expects two parameters, the first - an a is the "default case" the value that should be returned in case of Nothing. Next it is given a Maybe a and in case it is a Just x, x is returned. In the other case (Nothing) as said before the default is returned.
In your comment you say x should be returned in case no such factor exists. So I propose you define a new function:
firstFactorOfJust :: Integral a => a -> a
firstFactorOfJust x = fromMaybe x $ firstFactorOf x
So this function firstFactorOfJust calls your firstFactorOf function and if the result is Nothing, x will be returned. In the other case, the outcome of firstFactorOf will be returned (but only the Integral part, not the Just ... part).
EDIT (simplified)
Based on your own answer that had the intend to simplify things a bit, I had the idea that you can simplify it a bit more:
firstFactorOf x | Just z <- find ((0 ==) . mod x) [2..x-1] = z
| otherwise = x
and since we are all fan of optimization, you can already stop after sqrt(x) iterations (a well known optimization in prime checking):
isqrt :: Int -> Int
isqrt = floor . sqrt . fromIntegral
firstFactorOf x | Just z <- find ((0 ==) . mod x) [2..isqrt x] = z
| otherwise = x
Simplified question
For some reason there was some peculiarly complicated aspect in your question:
firstFactorOf x
| m == Nothing = m
| otherwise = m
where m =(find p [2..x-1])
p y = mod x y == 0
Why do you use guards to make a distinction between two cases that generate the exact same output? You can fold this into:
firstFactorOf x = m
where m = (find p [2..x-1])
p y = mod x y == 0
and even further:
firstFactorOf x = find p [2..x-1]
where p y = mod x y == 0
If you want it to return the first factor of x, or x, then this should work:
firstFactorOf x =
let
p y = mod x y == 0
m = (find p [2..x-1])
in
fromMaybe x m
import Data.List
import Data.Maybe
firstFactorOf x
| m == Nothing = x
| otherwise = fromJust m
where m =(find p [2..x-1])
p y = mod x y == 0
This was what I was after. Not sure why you guys made this so complicated.

Can we use 'where' in a lambda function in Haskell?

I was wondering if we can use where in an anonymous function or not. I tried to do it in this way:
\x -> k where k = x+1
But this gives a parse error on 'where'.
You can use where in certain expressions within a lambda expression, but not just inside.
f = \x ->
case x of
Nothing -> 12
Just y -> z * 2
where z = y + 7

Prelude exponentiation is hard to understand

I was reading the Haskell Prelude and finding it pretty understandable, then I stumbled upon the exponention definition:
(^)              :: (Num a, Integral b) => a -> b -> a
x ^ 0            =  1
x ^ n | n > 0    =  f x (n-1) x
where f _ 0 y = y
f x n y = g x n  where
g x n | even n  = g (x*x) (n `quot` 2)
| otherwise = f x (n-1) (x*y)
_ ^ _            = error "Prelude.^: negative exponent"
I do not understand the need for two nested wheres.
What I understood so far:
(^)              :: (Num a, Integral b) => a -> b -> a
The base must be a number and the exponent intege, ok.
x ^ 0            =  1
Base case, easy.
g x n | even n  = g (x*x) (n `quot` 2)
| otherwise = f x (n-1) (x*y)
Exponention by squaring... kind of ... Why is the f helper needed? Why are f and g given single letter names? Is it just optimization, am I missing something obvious?
_ ^ _            = error "Prelude.^: negative exponent"
N > 0 was checked before, N is negative if we arrived here, so error.
My implementation would be a direct translation to code of:
Function exp-by-squaring(x, n )
if n < 0 then return exp-by-squaring(1 / x, - n );
else if n = 0 then return 1; else if n = 1 then return x ;
else if n is even then return exp-by-squaring(x * x, n / 2);
else if n is odd then return x * exp-by-squaring(x * x, (n - 1) / 2).
Pseudocode from wikipedia.
To illustrate what #dfeuer is saying, note that the way f is written it either:
f returns a value
or, f calls itself with new arguments
Hence f is tail recursive and therefore can easily be transformed into a loop.
On the other hand, consider this alternate implementation of exponentiation by squaring:
-- assume n >= 0
exp x 0 = 1
exp x n | even n = exp (x*x) (n `quot` 2)
| otherwise = x * exp x (n-1)
The problem here is that in the otherwise clause the last operation performed is a multiplication. So exp either:
returns 1
calls itself with new arguments
calls itself with some new arguments and multiplies the result by x.
exp is not tail recursive and therefore cannot by transformed into a loop.
f is indeed an optimization. The naive approach would be "top down", calculating x^(n `div` 2) and then squaring the result. The downside of this approach is that it builds a stack of intermediate computations. What f lets this implementation do is to first square x (a single multiplication) and then raise the result to the reduced exponent, tail recursively. The end result is that the function will likely operate entirely in machine registers. g seems to help avoid checking for the end of the loop when the exponent is even, but I'm not really sure if it's a good idea.
As far as I understand it exponentiation is solved by squaring as long as the exponent is even.
This leads to the answer why f is needed in case of an odd number - we use f to return the result in the case of g x 1, in every other odd case we use f to get back in the g-routine.
You can see it best I think if you look at an example:
x ^ n | n > 0 = f x (n-1) x
where f _ 0 y = y
f x n y = g x n
where g x n | even n = g (x*x) (n `quot` 2)
| otherwise = f x (n-1) (x*y)
2^6 = -- x = 2, n = 6, 6 > 0 thus we can use the definition
f 2 (6-1) 2 = f 2 5 2 -- (*)
= g 2 5 -- 5 is odd we are in the "otherwise" branch
= f 2 4 (2*2) -- note that the second '2' is still in scope from (*)
= f 2 4 (4) -- (**) for reasons of better readability evaluate the expressions, be aware that haskell is lazy and wouldn't do that
= g 2 4
= g (2*2) (4 `quot` 2) = g 4 2
= g (4*4) (2 `quot` 2) = g 16 1
= f 16 0 (16*4) -- note that the 4 comes from the line marked with (**)
= f 16 0 64 -- which is the base case for f
= 64
Now to your question of using single letter function names - that's the kind of thing you have to get used to it is a way most people in the community write. It has no effect on the compiler how you name your functions - as long as they start with a lower case letter.
As others noted, the function is written using tail-recursion for efficiency.
However, note that one could remove the innermost where while preserving tail-recursion as follows: instead of
x ^ n | n > 0 = f x (n-1) x
where f _ 0 y = y
f x n y = g x n
where g x n | even n = g (x*x) (n `quot` 2)
| otherwise = f x (n-1) (x*y)
we can use
x ^ n | n > 0 = f x (n-1) x
where f _ 0 y = y
f x n y | even n = f (x*x) (n `quot` 2) y
| otherwise = f x (n-1) (x*y)
which is also arguably more readable.
I have however no idea why the authors of the Prelude chose their variant.

How/why is this function legal in OCaml? Also, how would I go about checking if statements like this one are legal in the future?

I'm not sure how to properly go through this function and determine its type. I typed it into an OCaml top level and the output is "hello world" but I do not know why. Could someone please explain how they determined the final output? Thanks!
let f y =
let z = (let x = 5 in y * x) + y in "hello" in (f 7) ^ " world"
Well, the entire thing is based on the OCaml construct let a = b in c. If you match up the let and in pairs, you can see the structure of the expression.
let f y =
let z = (let x = 5 in y * x) + y
in "hello"
in (f 7) ^ " world"
Essentially f is a function that does some useless computation then returns "hello".
Update
This code has two slightly different uses of let a = b in c. Maybe it will be clearer to explain them separately.
The following:
let y = expr1 in expr2
defines a new name y with the value given by expr. The name y can then be used in expr2.
The following:
let f x = expr1 in expr2
defines a function f. The definition expr1 will usually use the argument x to calculate an interesting value. Then the function f can be called in expr2.
Your code has two instances of the first construct (defining values z and x), and one of the second construct (defining function f).
This function is specially obfuscated, so lets move carefully over the reduction steps:
let f y =
let z = (let x = 5 in y * x) + y in "hello" in (f 7) ^ " world"
==>
let f y =
let z = y * 5 + y in "hello" in (f 7) ^ " world"
==>
let f y =
let z = y * 5 + y in "hello" in (f 7) ^ " world"
At this point is obvious, that z is unused in function f, let's remove it:
let f y = "hello" in (f 7) ^ " world"
We can see, that actually we have the "function" f, that always returns "hello":
let f y = "hello"
That is defined in the scope of the expression (f 7) ^ " world". f 7 is evaluated to "hello", and we have "hello world".
The
let <name> = <expr-1> in <expr-2>
has the following rules of evaluation:
evaluate <expr-1>
substitute each free occurrences of <name> in <expr-2> with <expr-1>
evaluate <expr-2>

Haskell - too few arguments

I want to write a Haskell program that calculates the sum of numbers between 2 given numbers.
I have the following code:
sumInt :: Int -> Int -> Int
sumInt x y
| x > y = 0
| otherwise = x + sumInt x+1 y
But when I compile it I get the following error:
SumInt is applied to too few arguments.
I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
You need parentheses around x+1:
| otherwise = x + sumInt (x + 1) y
The reason is that function application binds more tightly than operators, so whenever you see
f x <> y
This is always parsed as
(f x) <> y
and never as
f (x <> y)

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