functional code
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg4779] functional code
- From: gaylord at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (richard j. gaylord)
- Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 13:54:58 -0400
- Organization: university of illinois
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
i received the following query from someone and thought i'd post the problem and a solution i've come up with: query: Here is my non-functional solution to this problem: Given a list of numbers row={18,19,1,11,25,12,22,14} Select the numbers from the list by taking the largest number from the ends of the list until the list is empty. row={18,19,1,11,25,12,22,14}; p=Length[row]; result={}; Do[If[First[row]>=Last[row], AppendTo[result, First[row]];row=Rest[row], AppendTo[result,Last[row]];row=Drop[row,-1]], {p}]; result {18,19,14,22,12,25,11,1} If there a way to do this functionally? response: yes, of course it can be done functionally. here's a solution: [sorry if its a bit crude but i've spent the last 15 months writing cellular automata programs in mathematica and there is almost no programming involved, just simple rule writing, so i may a bit rusty [what an incrediblly immodest plug for my new book just arriving in bookstores as of last week :)]. In[30]:= Nest[ Function[y, ({Join[y[[1]],{#}] , DeleteCases[y[[2]], #]})&[Max[First[y[[2]]], Last[y[[2]]]]]], {{}, row}, Length[row]][[1]] Out[30]= {18, 19, 14, 22, 12, 25, 11, 1} -richard- -- "if you're not programming functionally, then you're programming dysfunctionally" ==== [MESSAGE SEPARATOR] ====