> Subject: lost soul needs help with trivial code.
The neatest solutions to these problems usually employ some kind of mapping
function. These also have the nice property that they lend themselves well
to automatic theorem proving. E.g. see the work of Stemple and Sheard,
following Boyer and Moore. The solutions below are for Common Lisp, POP-11
and ML. I am not enough of a LISP hacker to know whether Currying can be
done in that language. Of course, there is no need actually to name
the diff-pair function in any of the languages - use some lambda-form.
The main difference between POP-11 and ML in this respect is that POP-11
requires the explicit (%...%) notation for Currying (and it is on the
last argument). Note the ML warning - a nice feature of that language.
It tells you that the patterns for the function arguments are not
exhaustive, so that it would be an error to apply it to e.g. an empty
list, or one with one member only.
===========================================================================
Program in Common Lisp
===========================================================================
(defun diff-pair (pr)
(- (cadr pr) (car pr)))
(defun make-length-list(coord)
(mapcar #'diff-pair coord))
(make-length-list '((100 200)(300 400)(455 526)))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUTPUT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIFF-PAIR
MAKE-LENGTH-LIST
(100 100 71)
===========================================================================
Program in POP-11
==========================================================================
define diff_pair(p); p.tl.hd - p.hd
enddefine;
vars make_length_list = maplist(%diff_pair%); ;;; Make function by partial
;;; application or Currying.
make_length_list([[100 200] [300 400] [455 526]]) =>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUTPUT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
** [100 100 71]
===========================================================================
Program in ML
===========================================================================
fun maplist1 F [] = [] | ;;; Define maplist1 for
maplist1 F (x::L) = F x :: maplist1 F L; ;;; subsequent Currying.
fun diff_pair (i::j::[]) = j-i:int; ;;; Define pair-differencing
val make_length_list = maplist1 diff_pair; ;;; Curry it up
make_length_list [[100,200],[300,400],[455,526]];
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUTPUT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
val maplist1 = fn : ('a -> 'b) -> 'a list -> 'b list
;;; ML WARNING - Clauses of function declaration are non-exhaustive
;;; CONTEXT : fun diff_pair
val diff_pair = fn : int list -> int
val make_length_list = fn : int list list -> int list
[100, 100, 71] : int list
===========================================================================