Laboratory: List Recursion, Revisited
Summary:
In this laboratory, you will continue to explore the use of
recursion.
Preparation
a. Make a copy of list-recursion-revisited-lab.scm, which contains useful definitions
for this lab.
b. Review the file to see what procedures and values are in the list.
Exercises
Exercise 1: Making Greys
In the code for this lab, you will see three lists of grey values with
remarkably similar code. Can we generalize that code? We
know how to make lists of numbers.
And, once we have a list of numbers, we can certainly
figure out what scale factor to use to make greys: It's 255 (or 256)
divided by the largest value in the list of numbers. Putting it
all together, we get
But how do we find the largest value in the list of numbers? As you've
observed, (max
val1 val2)
computes the largest of val1 and
val2. We want to generalize this procedure to
work with a list of values.
a. Write (largest vals), a procedure that computes the largest value in a list of real numbers.
Now that you've implemented largest, you can use our new implementation
of greys.
b. What results do you expect for the following expressions?
> (map rgb->string (greys (list 1 2 3 4)))
> (map rgb->string (greys (list 1 5 2 3 6 1)))
> (map rgb->string (greys (list 8 4 2 0)))
c. Check your answers experimentally.
d. Create some lists of shades of grey using iota rather
than by building the list of numbers by hand.
Exercise 2: Joining Lists
You may recall that the procedure append
takes as parameters two lists, and joins the two lists together.
Let's generalize that procedure so that it works with more than
two lists.
a. Write a procedure, lists-join, that,
given a nonempty list of lists as a parameter, joins the member lists together
using append.
> (list (list 1 2 3))
((1 2 3))
> (lists-join (list (list 1 2 3)))
(1 2 3)
> (list (list 1 2 3) (list 10 11 12))
((1 2 3) (10 11 12))
> (lists-join (list (list 1 2 3) (list 10 11 12)))
(1 2 3 10 11 12)
> (list (list 1 2 3) (list 10 11 12) (list 20 21))
((1 2 3) (10 11 12) (20 21))
> (lists-join (list (list 1 2 3) (list 10 11 12) (list 20 21)))
(1 2 3 10 11 12 20 21)
> (list null (list 1 2 3))
(() (1 2 3))
> (lists-join (list null (list 1 2 3)))
(1 2 3)
> (list (list 1 2 3) null)
((1 2 3) ())
> (lists-join (list (list 1 2 3) null))
(1 2 3)
> (lists-join (list null (list 1 2 3) null null null null (list 100 99 98) null))
(1 2 3 100 99 98)
Note: At first glance, it may be puzzling to work
with a list of lists. However, you can disassemble that list just as
you do any other list: the car of a list-of-lists is a list, the
cdr of a list-of-lists is a list-of-lists, but with the first list removed.
Hint: Think about when you have a base case, what
you do in the base case, and what to do with the result of the recursive
case. (Remember, append is generally used to join
two lists.)
b. Use lists-join to join some of the color lists
your created in the preliminaries.
Exercise 3: Folding
Here are possible answers for exercises 1 and 2.
You'll notice that both do a similar thing: They take a two-parameter
procedure (max or append)
and generalize it to a list of values. The process of repeatedly
applying a two-parameter procedure so as to process a list is
often called folding the procedure.
You'll also notice that they both lists-join and
largest use similar code. When we identify a
common structure for similar procedures, it can be helpful to
generalize and then to explore that generalization. You will do
so in this exercise.
a. Sketch a template of the common parts of lists-join
and largest
(with blanks to fill in for the rest).
b. Identify one or two other procedures from the reading that follow
the same pattern.
c. Using your template, write a procedure,
(smallest lst),
that finds the smallest value in a list.
d. Using your template, write a procedure,
(rgb-darkest lst),
that finds the darkest color in a list of RGB colors.
Hint: You may find
it useful to build a utility procedure, (rgb-darker
rgb1 rgb2),
that finds the darker of two colors.
Exercise 4: Checking for Brightness
You may recall that in the reading we explored ways to build
predicates that apply to lists by starting with predicates that
apply to individual values. Let's try writing a few such procedures.
a. Write a procedure, (rgb-all-bright?
colors), that, given a list of RGB colors,
determines if all of the colors are bright.
b. Write a procedure, (rgb-any-bright?
colors), that, given a list of RGB colors,
determines if any of them are bright.
Exercise 5: Checking for Primaries
a. Write a procedure, (rgb-all-primary?
colors), that, given a list of colors,
determines if all of the colors are primary colors (that is, are
red, blue, or green).
b. Write a procedure, (rgb-any-primary?
colors), that, given a list of colors,
determines if any of them are primary colors.
Exercise 6: Checking for Membership
One way to start writing the previous procedures is to define a
rgb-primary? predicate.
(define rgb-primary?
(let ((red (rgb-new 255 0 0))
(green (rgb-new 0 255 0))
(blue (rgb-new 0 0 255)))
(lambda (color)
(or (equal? color red) (equal? color green) (equal? color blue)))))
Can we generalize this technique for determining whether a value is
one of a number of values? Certainly. Let's write a procedure,
(member? val
vals) that holds only if
val appears in vals.
We know that
val does not appear in the empty list.
val appears in a non-empty
vals if val is the
car of vals or if it appears in the
cdr of vals.
a. Translate this description into Scheme. That is, write
member?.
b. Add member? to your library.
c. We can use member? to define the following
interesting procedure.
Explain what this procedure does.
d. What result do you expect from the following expressions?
> (map greenish? greens)
> (map greenish? my-colors)
> (map greenish? (list (rgb-new 0 0 0) (rgb-new 255 0 0) (rgb-new 128 0 0)))
e. Check your answers experimentally.