As I continued my contracting of racket/list last night, I encountered
a strange function:
(define (split-at-right.v1 list n)
(let loop ([list list]
[lead (or (drop* list n) (err2large 'split-at-right list
n))]
[pfx '()])
;; could throw an error for non-lists, but be more like `split-at'
(if (pair? lead)
(loop (cdr list) (cdr lead) (cons (car list) pfx))
(values (reverse pfx) list))))
;; internal use below
(define (drop* list n) ; no error checking, returns #f if index is too
large
(if (zero? n) list (and (pair? list) (drop* (cdr list) (sub1 n)))))
Try to figure out what it does before you read on. Don't look up the
docs.
(err2large just raises an error.)
It took me 5 minutes to figure out why this worked. I consider this
too much.
;; ---
So I rewrote in what I consider the obvious style:
(define (split-at-right l n)
(let down ([l l][seen '()])
(if (pair? l)
(down (cdr l) (cons (car l) seen))
(let up ([l seen][n n][seen l])
(if (> n 0)
(if (pair? l)
(up (cdr l) (- n 1) (cons (car l) seen))
(err2large 'split-at-right list n))
(values (reverse l) seen))))))
Yes, it's an extra line of code but I think it's truly straightforward:
recur down and reverse, recur backwards.
;; ---
Then I had doubts. Perhaps the original designer who baked this strange
invariant into the two loops knew something about the internal
performance
of racket that I don't know. So here is a microbenchmark stress test:
(define (stress-test split)
(define n 20000)
(define l (build-list n add1))
(define _ (begin (collect-garbage) (collect-garbage)))
(define x
(time
(for/list ((i (in-range n)))
(define-values (x y) (split-at-right l i))
(length y))))
(void))
(stress-test split-at-right)
(stress-test split-at-right.v1)
Here are the times:
cpu time: 19681 real time: 19672 gc time: 6942
cpu time: 19716 real time: 19792 gc time: 6966
No difference; if any, my version is a tad faster (on smaller
lists too).
;; ---
Structural design with straightforward accumulators is fine, just fine.
No need to encode invariants -- Matthias
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