CS52 - Spring 2016

CS52 - Spring 2016 - Class 3

Example code in this lecture

   interval.sml
   list_basics.sml
   rev_examples.sml

Lecture notes

admin
   - assignment 0
      - Make sure to name your file properly (assign1.sml, assign2.sml, ...)
      - Remember, no late work
   - assignment 1
      - due Friday at 5pm
      - start now!
      - make sure you're following formatting guidelines
         - no tabs (need to change to spaces in editor setting)
         - no lines longer than 80 characters
         - consistent and informative formatting
         - there is a formatCheck binary you can call to check some of these constraints (use it!). See the readings for where to find it.
   - keep up with the readings
   - mentor hours Tue, Wed and Thur

look at the interval function in interval.sml code
   - What does it do?
      - takes two numbers as parameters
         - how do you know they're numbers?
            - m+1
            - n <= m
      - creates a list (using ::)
      - the list contains the number from m to n
         - including m and n?
            - including m
            - not including n

      > interval 1 10;
      val it = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] : int list
   - What is its type signature (curried or uncurried)?
      val interval = fn : int -> int -> int list

      - curried function
      - has two parameters (sort of), both ints
      - gives us back a list of ints!

look at the interval2 function in interval.sml code
   - does the same thing!
   - uses @ instead of ::
      - notice that because we're using @, we have to do [n-1] because @ expects two lists
   - functionally these behave the same, but there are some differences in performance (more on this later!)
      > interval 1 100000;
      val it = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,...] : int list
      > interval2 1 100000;
      Interrupt

Comments, an aside
   - SML has one type of comment, similar to Java's /* */ comment
   - Comment start with (* and end with *)
   - They can span multiple lines
   - Commenting code:
      - You should have a comment at the top of any file you create explaining what's in there, your name, etc.
      - All functions should have comments above them explaining what that function does
      - If there are any complicated portions of the functions (or funny parts) you should also put a small comment to the side of that line
      - In general, SML tends to have less comments than other languages because the code is more compact and self-contained. BUT, you still should be putting in *some* comments

look at the append function in list_basics.sml code
   - To understand why @ is slower than ::, let's try and implement our own append function
   - We can also do recursion on lists
      - this will be a very, very common thing we'll see in this class
      - follows very naturally from the recursive definition of lists. a list is:
         - an element
         - and the rest of the list
      - recursion is then:
         - do something with the element
         - recursively process the rest of the list
   - What does the function do?
      - takes two parameters, two lists
      - appends the second list to the first
   - Has two patterns corresponding to the base case and the recursive case
      - recursive case
         - we can pattern match a non-empty list using (x::xs)
            - x gets the first element in the list
            - xs gets the rest of the list (xs = excess :)
         - x::(append xs lst)
            - the value is a list with x at the front
            - where the rest of the list is xs with lst appended to it
      - base case
         - eventually, as we process the elements of the first list, we will get to the end, which will be an empty list
         - this will pattern match to the first case
         - what is the empty list with lst appended to it?
            - just lst
   - What is the type signature?
      - takes two lists as input
      - gives back a list
      - what are the types of the lists?
         - we don't specify!
         - only thing is that all lists *must* be the same type

      val append = fn : 'a list -> 'a list -> 'a list

         - like we saw before 'a is a type variable
         - the lists must all be the same type, but we don't need to specify the type

look at addTo function in list_basics.sml code
   - What does it do and what is the type signature?
      - val addTo = fn: int -> int list -> int list
      - adds k to all elements in the list

   - Curried or uncurried?
      - curried
      - by making it curried we can make our own specialized functions:
         > val add47To = addTo 47;
         val add47To = fn : int list -> int list
         > add47To [10];
         val it = [57] : int list
         > add47To [1, 2, 3, 4];
         val it = [48,49,51,51] : int list

   - Notice again that there is a parameter, k, that's just along for the ride
      - the recursion is on the second parameter, the list

writing recursive functions
   1. define what the function header is (i.e. name and type signature)
      - what parameters does the function take? curried or uncurried?
      - what value does the function return
   2. define the recursive case
      - pretend you had a working version of your function, but it only works on smaller versions of your current problem, how could you write your function?
         - the recursive problem should be getting "smaller", by some definition of smaller
      - other ideas:
         - sometimes define it in English first and then translate that into code
         - often nice to think about it mathematically, using equals
   3. define the base case
      - recursive calls should be making the problem "smaller"
      - what is the smallest (or simplest) problem?
   4. put it all together
      - first, check the base case
         - return something (or do something) for the base case
      - if the base case isn't true
         - calculate the problem using the recursive definition
         - return the answer

An example: reverse
   - Write a function called rev that takes a list and gives us a reversed version of that list

   1. val rev = fn: 'a list -> 'a list
      - takes a list of values and returns the same values in a list, but reversed

   2. rev (x::xs) = ?
      - what would we get back if we called rev on xs?
         - all of xs reversed, as a list
         - trust the recursion
      - how could we then use that answer to get our overall answer?
         - put x at the end of it
      = (rev xs) @ [x]
         - why can't we just put (rev xs) @ x?
            - @ expects two lists as arguments!

   3. Each recursive call makes the list smaller. Eventually, it will be very, very easy to reverse
      - rev [] = []

   4. Put it all together:
      fun rev nil = nil
       | rev (x::xs) = (rev xs) @ [x];

Efficiency
   - I claim that this is not a very efficient implementation of reverse
   - How could we check this?
      - make a big list and reverse it!
   - Let's use our interval function we defined before. What does it do?
      - creates a list of numbers, m ... n-1
   - We can run rev on increasingly larger lists:
      > interval 1 10;
      val it = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] : int list
      > rev (interval 1 10);
      val it = [9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1] : int list
      > rev (interval 1 100);
      val it = [99,98,97,96,95,94,93,92,91,90,89,88,...] : int list

      An aside, SML won't display the full list, though this can be updated

      > rev (interval 1 1000);
      val it = [999,998,997,996,995,994,993,992,991,990,989,988,...] : int list
      > rev (interval 1 10000);
      val it = [9999,9998,9997,9996,9995,9994,9993,9992,9991,9990,9989,9988,...] : int list
      > rev (interval 1 100000);

      It works ok for small lists, but for longer lists it takes a while...

A more efficient reverse
   - The problem turns out to be (we'll talk about this more later) that @ is a linear time algorithm (see append above)
   - Let's try and solve the problem without using @
   - Tell me what the following function does:

      fun revAux (acc, []) = acc
       | revAux (acc, x::xs) = revAux(x::acc, xs);

      - First, what is it's type signature?
         val revAux = fn: 'a list * 'a list -> 'a list
rev_examples.sml rev_examples.sml
      - Is this a curried or uncurried function?
         - uncurried

      - What does it actually do?
         - adds the elements of second argument/list in reverse order to the first argument

   - How is revAux useful for rev?
      - if we call it with an empty list as the first argument, then it's reverse!
      - We could just write:
         fun rev2 lst = revAux ([],lst)

         - Any problems with this?
            - Any time you have an auxiliary or helper function, better to encapsulate it for use only with this function

information hiding with letrev_examples.sml
   - let allows you to define values (e.g. functions) that are only available inside a certain block of code
   - syntax

      let
         <val declaration1>; (including function definitions)
         <val declaration2>;
         ...
      in
         <expression>
      end;

   - the values declared inside of let ... in are only available inside the block of code in ... end
   - the value of the entire let expression is the value of <expression>

back to reverse
   - Often it's a good idea to write and test your auxiliary function separately and THEN put it in the let statement
   - A better version of rev: look at rev2 in rev_examples.sml code

   - Now, let's see if it's any more efficient!
      > rev2 [1, 2, 3, 4];
      val it = [4,3,2,1] : int list
      > rev2 (interval 1 100000);
      val it = [99999,99998,99997,99996,99995,99994,99993,99992,99991,99990,99989,99988, ...] : int list

error messages in SML
   - You will get exceptions/errors in SML
   - They're not the most informative, but you'll get used to understanding them as time goes on
   - For example, say we remove the parentheses around (m+1) in the interval function in rev_examples.sml
   - When we type: use "rev_examples.sml", we get the follow errors
      [opening rev_examples.sml]
      val rev = fn : 'a list -> 'a list
      rev_examples.sml:23.13-23.27 Error: operator is not a function [literal]
       operator: int
       in expression:
       1 n
      rev_examples.sml:23.9-23.28 Error: operator and operand don't agree [overload]
       operator domain: 'Z * 'Z list
       operand: 'Z * 'Y
       in expression:
       m :: interval m + 1 n
      rev_examples.sml:19.5-23.28 Error: right-hand-side of clause doesn't agree with function result type [overload]
       expression: 'Z -> _ list
       result type: 'Y
       in declaration:
       interval = (fn arg => (fn <pat> => <exp>))

      uncaught exception Error
       raised at: ../compiler/TopLevel/interact/evalloop.sml:66.19-66.27
       ../compiler/TopLevel/interact/evalloop.sml:44.55
          ../compiler/TopLevel/interact/evalloop.sml:296.17-296.20

   - Start at the first error/exception (this isn't always perfect, but it's generally a good place to start)
   - SML gives you information about *where* the problem is:
      rev_examples.sml:23.13-23.27

      - rev_examples.sml is the file with the problem
      - 23 is the line number it's at
      - 13-23 is the character span in the line with the problem
   - What's wrong with this function?
      - Be careful about order of operations
      - Function binding has higher precedence than + (in fact, almost the highest precedence of anything, so be careful)

warnings in SML
   - Next time, I'll talk about warnings you can ignore in SML
   - In general, most warnings you CANNOT ignore
   - One of the most common warnings is "Warning: match nonexhaustive"
   - For example, remove the second line of the rev function in rev_examples.sml and we get the following error:
      rev_examples.sml:12.5-12.22 Warning: match nonexhaustive
    nil => ...

      - the code does actual run (for now), but there's a problem!)
   - What's the issue?
      - Not every type of list we can call rev on will work (in fact any non-empty list will give us a problem)

      > rev [1, 2, 3, 4];
      uncaught exception Match [nonexhaustive match failure]
       raised at: rev_examples.sml:12.22