This document contains the first hand-in assignment ("lab") for the
course. It's a small one just to get the ball rolling. See the course
home page for the deadline (it is soon!).
We suggest that you find a lab partner and work together in
pairs.
(When you are done,
please submit your solution using the Fire system.)
Please note that lab assignment 2 and onwards must be submitted by groups of exactly two people.
Lab assignment 1: the power function
In this lab assignment, you will implement the well-known "power" function in
two different new ways.
The power function takes two arguments n and k and
computes nk.
Your implementation only has to work for non-negative k.
You have possibly seen one implementation of this function in the lecture. If not here it is:
power :: Integer -> Integer -> Integer
power n k | k < 0 = error "power: negative argument"
power n 0 = 1
power n k = n * power n (k-1)
You will implement two more ways in this lab assignment.
Part 1
In order to calculate power
n k,
for a given n and k, how many computing
"steps" are being used?
Hint:
power
n 0
takes 1 step.
power
n 1
takes 1 step, and then uses power
n 0
.
power
n 2
takes 1 step, and then uses power
n 1
.
power
n 3
takes 1 step, and then uses power
n 2
.
- And so forth.
Note: Please make sure you follow the submission guidelines when you write your code.
Part 2
A different way of computing the power function is to use the standard Haskell
function product
, which calculates the product (multiplication) of
all elements in a list.
To calculate power
n k, first construct
a list with k elements, all being n,
and then use product
.
Implement this idea as a Haskell function power1
.
Hint:
You have to come up with a way of producing a list with k
elements, all being equal to n.
Use a list comprehension, or use the standard
Haskell function replicate
.
If you use replicate
, you might want to
use the function fromInteger
too!
Use Hoogle to find out more about
standard functions (and also to search for standard functions by their type).
Part 3
A different approach to calculating the power function uses fewer computing
steps.
We use the fact that, if k is even,
we can calculate nk as follows:
nk = (n2)k/2 (k is even)
In other words:
nk = (n * n)k/2 (k is even)
So, instead of recursively using the case for k-1,
we use the (much smaller) case for k/2.
If k is not even, we simply go one step down in order to arrive at
an even k, just as in the original definition of power:
nk = n * (nk-1) (k is not even)
To sum up, to calculate power
n k:
- If k is even, we use (n * n)k/2
- If k is odd, we use n*(nk-1)
Implement this idea as a Haskell function power2
.
Hints:
- Do not forget to add a base case (what do you do when k=0?)
- You need to find out when numbers are even or odd. Use the standard Haskell
functions
even
and/or odd
.
- To divide integer numbers, use the function
div
(and not the function /
,
which is used to divide floating point and rational numbers)
Part 4
We would like the three functions power
, power1
,
and power2
to calculate the same thing.
It is probably a good idea to test this!
A. Come up with a number of test cases (inputs you will test your functions on).
Argue why you have chosen these test cases. (Think about for what inputs the
functions are defined, and for what inputs the functions are not
defined.)
B. Implement a function prop_powers
which given n
and k checks that
power
n k,
power1
n k, and
power2
n k
all give the same answer.
C. Write all the test cases you suggested in part A as a Haskell
function that performs all test cases.
It is probably a good idea to use the function that you defined in part B.
Hint: You can use a list comprehension to combine all possible cases
you would like to test for n and k. Use the standard Haskell function "and" to
combine the results. If you are not familiar with list
comprehensions, you do not have to use these.
D.
Try running quickcheck on the function prop_powers
.
It will probably fail. If so, define a new version, prop_powers'
,
for which quickcheck succeeds.
The new version should of course still test the intended property!
Submission Guidelines
See the course home page for lab deadlines.
Write your answers in one file, called Lab1.hs. For each part, use
Haskell comments to indicate what part of the file contains the answer to that part. For answers in natural language, use English;
write your answers also in Haskell comments. Remove irrelevant things from the
file.
Before you submit your code, Clean It Up! After you feel you are
done, spend some time on cleaning your code; make it simpler, remove
unnecessary things, etc. We will reject your solution if it is not clean. Clean
code:
Does not have long lines (< 78 characters)
Has a consistent layout
Has type signatures for all top-level functions
Has good comments
Has no junk (junk is unused code, commented code, unneccessary comments)
Has no overly complicated function definitions
Does not contain any repetitive code (copy-and-paste programming)
Feel free to use the hlint program to help with many of
these issues and other haskell style issues.
When you are done, please submit it using the Fire system.
Good luck!