Comp 210 Lab 4: More Recursion
Index:
List examples,
Natural number examples
There are too many examples here to do all during lab.
Instead, do some from each group during lab, and the rest on your own.
Important for all examples:
- Follow the design recipe.
- For each group of examples, use the same template, because
the functions are on the same kind of data.
- Use the stepper to help understand the programs.
List examples
Non-empty lists of numbers
To do:
- Make a data definition for non-empty lists of numbers.
Hint: The base case should not be empty, since that is
not a non-empty list of numbers! What is a description of the
shortest non-empty lists of numbers?
- Develop a program which takes a non-empty list of numbers and returns the
average (aka, arithmetic mean) of all the numbers.
- Develop a program which takes a list of numbers and returns the
average of all the numbers.
For this example, arbitrarily define the average of an empty list
to be false.
Note: There are actually
two reasonable solutions to this, although
we hinted towards the usually preferable one.
Mixed data lists
To do:
- Make a data definition for a value which is a symbol or a number.
- Make a data definition for lists containing symbols and/or numbers.
Examples would include
empty
(cons 1 (cons 5 (cons 0 empty)))
(cons 1 (cons 'hi empty))
(cons 'hello (cons 'there empty))
- Develop a program which computes the product of all the numbers in
a such a list.
The structure of your program should correspond with your choice
of data definition.
Note: There are two reasonable ways
to do this, although we hinted at the usually preferable one.
Functions resulting in lists
To do:
- Develop a program which consumes a list of numbers and
another number and returns a list of the sums of the original
list and the second argument. E.g.,
(add-numbers (cons 1 (cons 3 (cons 4 empty))) 2)
=
(cons 3 (cons 5 (cons 6 empty)))
- Develop a program which consumes a list of numbers and returns
a list of all of those numbers which are positive.
Natural Numbers
Natural numbers are all the non-negative integers. It is often
convenient to consider them with the following recursive data definition.
;; a natural number (nat) is one of
;; - 0
;; - (add1 n)
;; where n is a natural number
While we can type (add1 (add1 (add1 0))), we can also use
the "shorthand" 3.
To do:
- Develop a program which computes the factorial of a natural number.
- Develop a program which consumes a natural number and a symbol
and returns a list of that many copies of the symbol. E.g.,
(copies 3 'hi) = (cons 'hi (cons 'hi (cons 'hi empty)))
- Develop a program which consumes a natural number n and returns
a list of the natural numbers from n-1 to 0.