For example;
data TRAINING=AGAIN Int [TRAINING]
|RUN
|JUMP
|PUNCH Int
deriving (Eq,Show,Read)
is defined and I want that if the User enters something like:
"RUN, PUNCH 15, AGAIN 3 [JUMP, AGAIN 2 [PUNCH 20]]"
then the program should return
[RUN,PUNCH 15,AGAIN 3 [JUMP,AGAIN 2 [PUNCH 20]]]
So I wrote
fight :: String->[TRAINING]
fight xs=[read xs ::TRAINING]
but I am getting "no parse Exception". I am novice and I want to know what a "no parse Exception" is and how I can fix it ?
A no parse exception means that what you gave Haskell isn't the correct pattern for the instance of Read. In this case it's because list's are shown like this:
[<show element>,<show element>...]
And you're missing the outer brackets. Fixing it is as easy as seeing what the output should be:
Prelude> show [RUN,PUNCH 15,AGAIN 3 [JUMP,AGAIN 2 [PUNCH 20]]]
"[RUN,PUNCH 15,AGAIN 3 [JUMP,AGAIN 2 [PUNCH 20]]]"
So you need to surround the whole thing with []'s. Your function is right, you just have a slightly incorrect input string.
If you don't like this restriction, it may be time to just write a simple parser with Parsec or similar. Though this might be a bit challenging if you're totally new to Haskell.
In other words, following jozefg's answer:
fight xs = read xs ::[TRAINING]
and also:
"[RUN, PUNCH 15, AGAIN 3 [JUMP, AGAIN 2 [PUNCH 20]]]"
Related
As the title states, I see pieces of code online where the variables/functions have ' next to it, what does this do/mean?
ex:
function :: [a] -> [a]
function ...
function' :: ....
The notation comes from mathematics. It is read x prime. In pretty much any math manual you can find something like let x be a number and x' be the projection of ... (math stuff).
Why not using another convention? well, in mathematics It makes a lot of sense because It can be very pedagogical... In programming we aren't used to this convention so I don't see the point of using it, but I am not against it neither.
Just to give you an example of its use in mathematics so you can understand why It is used in Haskell. Below, the same triangle concept but one using prime convention and other not using it. It is pretty clear in the first picture that pairs (A, A'), (B, B'), ... are related by one being the vertex and the prime version being the midpoint of the oposite edge. Whereas in the second example, you just have to remember that A is the midpoint of the oposite edge of vertex P. First is easier and more pedagogical:
As the other answers said, function' is just another variable name. So,
don'tUse :: Int -> IO ()
don'tUse won'tBe''used'' = return ()
is just like
dontUse :: Int -> IO ()
dontUse wontBeUsed = return ()
with slightly different names. The only requirement is that the name starts with a lowercase-letter or underscore, after that you can have as many single-quote characters as you want.
Prelude> let _' = 1
Prelude> let _'' = 2
Prelude> let _''''''''' = 9
Prelude> _' + _'' * _'''''''''
19
...Of course it's not necessarily a good idea to name variables like that; normally such prime-names are used when making a slightly different version of an already named thing. For example, foldl and foldl' are functions with the same signature that do essentially the same thing, only with different strictness (which often affects performance memory usage and whether infinite inputs are allowed, but not the actual results).
That said, to the question
Haskell what does the ' symbol do?
– the ' symbol does in fact do various other things as well, but only when it appears not as a non-leading character in a name.
'a' is a character literal.
'Foo is a constructor used on the type level. See DataKinds.
'bar and ''Baz are quoted names. See TemplateHaskell.
I just started Haskell and I'm struggling!!!
So I need to create a list om Haskell that has the formula
F(n) = (F(n-1)+F(n-2)) * F(n-3)/F(n-4)
and I have F(0) =1, F(1)=1,F(2)=1,F(3)=1
So I thought of initializing the first 4 elements of the list and then have a create a recursive function that runs for n>4 and appends the values to the list.
My code looks like this
let F=[1,1,1,1]
fib' n F
| n<4="less than 4"
|otherwise = (F(n-1)+F(n-2))*F(n-3)/F(n-4) : fib (n-1) F
My code looks conceptually right to me(not sure though), but I get an incorrect indentation error when i compile it. And am I allowed to initialize the elements of the list in the way that I have?
First off, variables in Haskell have to be lower case. Secondly, Haskell doesn't let you mix integers and fractions so freely as you may be used to from untyped or barely-typed languages. If you want to convert from an Int or an Integer to, say, a Double, you'll need to use fromIntegral. Thirdly, you can't stick a string in a context where you need a number. Fourthly, you may or may not have an indentation problem—be sure not to use tabs in your Haskell files, and to use the GHC option -fwarn-tabs to be sure.
Now we get to the heart of the matter: you're going about this all somewhat wrong. I'm going to give you a hint instead of a full answer:
thesequence = 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 : -- Something goes here that *uses* thesequence
Why is the function name repeated in
example:
lucky :: (Integral a) => a -> String
lucky 7 = "LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN!"
lucky x = "Sorry, you're out of luck, pal!"
when should I not be repeating function name? what is the meaning of it?
thanks
What you are seeing is pattern match in action.
I will show you another example:
test 1 = "one"
test 2 = "two"
test 3 = "three"
Demo in ghci:
ghci> test 1
"one"
ghci> test 2
"two"
ghci> test 3
"three"
ghci> test 4
"*** Exception: Non-exhaustive patterns in function test
So, when you call any function, the runtime system will try to match
the input with the defined function. So a call to test 3 will
initially check test 1 and since 1 is not equal to 3, it will
move on to the next definition. Again since 2 is not equal to 3,
it will move to the next defintion. In the next definiton since 3 is
equal to 3 it will return "three" String back. When you try to
pattern match something, which doesn't exist at all, the program
throws the exception.
This kind of pattern matching can be transformed to a case statement (and indeed, that's what compilers will normally do!):
lucky' n = case n of
7 -> "LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN!"
x -> "Sorry, you're out of luck, pal!"
Because the x isn't really used, you'd normally write _ -> "Sorry, ..." instead.
Note that this is not2 the same as
lucky'' n = if n==7 then ...
Equality comparison with (==) is in general more expensive1 than pattern matching, and also comes out uglier.
1 Why it's more expensive: suppose we have a big data structure. To determine that they are equal, the program will need to dig through both entire structures, make sure really all branches are equal. However, if you pattern match, you will just compare a small part you're interested in right now.
2 Actually, it is the same in the case, but just because the compiler has a particular trick for pattern matching on numbers: it rewrites it with (==). This is really special for Num types and not true for anything else. (Except if you use the OverloadedStrings extension.)
That definition of lucky uses "pattern matching", and equals (in this case)
lucky :: (Integral a) => a -> String
lucky a = if a == 7
then "LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN!"
else "Sorry, you're out of luck, pal!"
I assume you're looking at learn you a haskell. After that example, it says that
When you call lucky, the patterns will be checked from top to bottom and when it conforms to a pattern, the corresponding function body will be used.
So the first line indicates the type of the function, and later lines are patterns to check. Each line has the function name so the compiler knows you're still talking about the same function.
Think of it this way: When you write the expression lucky (a+b) or whatever, the compiler will attempt to replace lucky (a+b) with the first thing before the = in the function definition that "fits." So if a=3 and b=4, you get this series of replacements:
lucky (a+b) =
lucky (3+4) =
--pattern matching occurs...
lucky 7 =
"LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN!"
This is part of what makes Haskell so easy to reason about in practice; you get a system that works similarly to math.
I have a tiny DSL that actually works quite well. When I say
import language.CWMWL
main = runCWMWL $ do
out (matrixMult, A, 1, row, 1 3 44 6 7)
then runCWMWL is a function that is exported by language.CWMWL. This parses the experession and takes some action.
What I want to achieve is that there is some way to repeat this e.g. 1000 times and have the third element of the tuple consisting the numbers 1 to 1000. My own DSL is not complete enough to do this. Eventually I want to change the string in the last element as well.
Is there any possibility to do this without Quasi Quotes? Are Quasi Quotes the best tool for this?
What binops / primitives would my DSL need to contain or need to wrap in order to allow this in an elegant way?
Unless I'm misunderstanding, I don't think quasiquotation will get you something much nicer than
main = runCWMWL $
sequence [ out (matrixMult, A, n, row, 1 3 44 6 7) | n <- [1..1000] ]
You might also look into MonadComprehensions as well as RebindableSyntax for other ideas.
Consider the following example in e:
var a : int = -3
var b : int = 3
var c : uint = min(a,b); print c
c = 3
var d : int = min(a,b); print d
d = -3
The arguments inside min() are autocasted to the type of the result expression.
My questions are:
Are there other programming languages that use type autocasting, how do they treat functions like min() and max()?
Is this behavior logical? I mean this definition is not consistent with the following possible definition of min:
a < b ? a : b
thanks
There are many languages that do type autocasting and many that will not. I should say upfront that I don't think it's a very good idea, and I prefer a more principled behavior in my language but some people prefer the convenience and lack of verbosity of autocasting.
Perl
Perl is an example of a language that does type autocasting and here's a really fun example that shows when this can be quite confusing.
print "bob" eq "bob";
print "nancy" eq "nancy";
print "bob" == "bob";
print "nancy" == "nancy";
The above program prints 1 (for true) three times, not four. Why not the forth? Well, "nancy" is not == "nancy". Why not? Because == is the numerical equality operator. eq is for string equality. The strings are being compared as you might thing in eq but in == they are being converted to number automatically. What number is "bob" equally to? Zero of course. Any string that doesn't have a number as its prefix is interpreted as zero. For this reason "bob" == "chris" is true. Why isn't "nancy" == "nancy"? Why isn't "nancy" zero? Because that is read as "nan" for "not a number". NaN is not equal to another NaN. I, personally, find this confusing.
Javascript
Javascript is another example of a language that will do type autocasting.
'5' - 3
What's the result of that expression? 2! Very good.
'5' + 3
What's the result of that one? 8? Wrong! It's '53'.
Confused? Good. Wow Javascript, Such Good Conventions, Much Sense. It's a series of really funny Javascript evaluations based on automatic casting of types.
Why would anyone do this!?
After seeing some carefully selected horror stories you might be asking yourself why people who are intelligent enough to invent two of the most popular programming languages in the entire world would do something so silly. I don't like type autocasting but to be fair, there is an argument for it. It's not purely a bug. Consider the following Haskell expression:
length [1,2,3,4] / 2
What does this equal? 2? 2.0? Nope! It doesn't compile due to a type error. length returns an Int and you can't divide that. You must explicitly cast the length to a fraction by calling fromIntegral in order for this to work.
fromIntegral (length [1,2,3,4]) / 2
That can definitely get quite annoying if you're doing a lot of math with integers and floats moving about in your program. But I would greatly prefer that to having to understand why nancy isn't equal to nancy but chris is, in fact, equal to bob.
Happy medium?
Scheme only have one number type. It automatically converts floats and fractions and ints happy and treats them just as you'd expect. It will allow you to divide the length of a list without explicit casting because it knows what you mean. But no, it will never secretly convert a string to a number. Strings aren't numbers. That's just silly. ;)
Your example
As for your example, it's hard to say it is or is not logical. Confusing, yes. I mean you're here on stack overflow aren't you? The reason you're getting 3 I think is either -3 is being interpreted, like Ross said, as a unit in 2's compliment and is a much higher number or because the result of the min is -3 and then it's getting turned into an unsigned int by dropping the negative. The problem is that you asked it for asked it to put the result into an unsigned int but the result is negative. So I would say that what it did is logical in the context of type autocasting, but that type autocasting is confusing. Presumably, you're being saved from having to do explicit type casting all over the place and paying for it with weird behavior like this on occasion.