Passing arguments and pattern matching
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg33792] Passing arguments and pattern matching
- From: "Coleman, Mark" <mark.coleman at dri-wefa.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 03:50:54 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Greetings,
I have a question on pattern matching that I have been struggling with. First I'll describe the issue broadly, and then attempt to illustrate it with a specific example. My intution is that is a relatively simple answer, but I have been unable to find it.
I would like to write a general function that accepts these two lists as arguments, i.e., myPattern[a_List,b_List]. The function would act something like the built-in Mathematica Postion[] pattern function and return the positions of any elements of b that occur in List a. This function will be called by other functions, so the user will not know in advance the values of lists a or b. In my attempts to build this function I have used the Position[] function. The difficulty is that Position treats the arguments I pass it as 'literal', and not as references to what the arguement represents.
For instance, let's say I define two lists as follows:
a = {x, Log[x], y, x y, Log[y] };
b = {x};
Now say I wish to compute the position of x or various functions of x in a, then of course
In[24]:= Position[a,x]
Out[24]= {{1},{2,1},{4,1}}
In[26]:= Position[a,Log[x]]
Out[26]= {{2}}
and so on. But now assume I wish to define a function
myPattern[lista_List,listb_List] := Position[lista,listsb]
If I call myPatten[a,b], this is the same as executing
In[27]:=Position[a,b]
Out[27]= {}
My question is, how do I have Mathematica treat the second argument not as a literal ("b"), but as representing a the value of the underlying argument? For instance
myPattern[a,{Log[x]}] would return {{2}}
Thanks!
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Passing arguments and pattern matching
- From: "Martin Jenkins" <lamarth@optushome.com.au>
- Re: Passing arguments and pattern matching