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Re: Help needed with List!

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg16930] Re: Help needed with List!
  • From: "David Keith" <dkeith at sarif.com>
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 02:32:37 -0400
  • Organization: Hevanet Communications
  • References: <7ec5kg$cu2@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

For the first question consider:

In[1]:= ToExpression[Characters[ToString[123456]]]

Out[1]= {1,2,3,4,5,6}


ToString[123456] converts the number to a string form.

Characters[] produces a list of the individual characters in the string.

The characters "look" like numbers, but they're not. I presume you really
want numbers, so

ToExpression[] threads onto the list (it's listable) and converts each
character to a number, since that is how the front end would interpret such
input.

To see this all clearly, do the operations one at a time instead of nesting
them as I did here.


For the second question consider:

In[2]:= a={1,2,3,4}
Out[2]= {1,2,3,4}

In[3]:= b={1,2}
Out[3]= {1,2}

In[4]:= Select[a,!MemberQ[b,#]&]
Out[4]= {3,4}


This is a bit harder. It uses a pure function, which can be a little hard to
get used to at first, but very worthwhile.

Starting from the outside,

Select[a,test], where I describe the test next, constructs a new list by
selecting only those elements for which the applied test evaluates as True.

The test here is a pure function:

MemberQ[list,element] asks whether element occurs in list, so !MemberQ (the
! is "Not") is True if element is not in list. The element here is
designated by #, which represents the argument of the pure function, and the
& character is what tells Mathematica that this is a definition of a pure
function.

The list which MemberQ is testing elements against is b, so the Select
function is creating a list of the members of a which do not appear in b.

Regards,

Dave


alvaroo at my-dejanews.com wrote in message <7ec5kg$cu2 at smc.vnet.net>...
>Sirs Probably these are FAQs but I am new in this newsgroup and I have not
>been able to solve them. I use Mathematica 3.0:  (i) I need to convert a
long
>integer number in List format. For example if I had the number 123456 I
need
>to convert it into {1,2,3,4,5,6}:  Is it possible with an instruction? And,
>(ii) I need to delete from a List A the common elements with other List B:
>for example if A = {1,2,3,4} and B = {1,2} I need to delete by an
instruction
>the elements 1, 2 of List B from List A to obtain List C = {3,4}.  I am
>working with integers with 10.000 digits or more so you can appreciate how
>helpful for me it would be to solve these questions.  Thanks in advance.
>alvaroo
>
>-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
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