List
Utility FunctionsArt students intentionally reproduce great works of art to develop their own skills and techniques. The purpose isn’t to become an imitator, but to deepen an understanding of important work and styles that came before you.
Reverse engineering algorithms and abstractions in computer science is of the same spirit! In this exercise you will implement algorithms to practice computational thinking. You will gain familiarity with the names and behaviors of commonly useful functions.
Since the work you do is reproducing tried and true abstractions of the past, in the future you can and should use your language’s preferred functions and idioms instead. In this exercise we will show you how to achieve the same functionality using idiomatic Python in the future. Your function implementations may only make use of the built-in len
function, and a List
object’s methods append
and pop
.
Specifically off-limits in this exercise are the following. Making use of any of the following will result in a limited learning experience for the function you use them in:
len
- specifically not max
, min
, slice
List
class’s +
or ==
operators nor built-in methods beyond append
List
s.count
Given a List
of int
values, and an int
to search for, count
should return the number of times the number you are searching for appears in the List
. Here is an example use case of your function once completed:
>>> count([1, 0, 1], 1)
2
>>> count([1, 1, 0], 0)
1
>>> count([110, 110, 110], 1)
0
Your implementation should not involve the creation of another List
.
exercises
directory create a directory named ex05
exercises/ex05
directory create a file named utils.py
__author__
variable assigned to your name and e-mail address..from typing import List
. This will allow you to make use of the List
type in Python.count
count
function as described above.exercises/ex05
directory, create a file named utils_test.py
_test.py
indicating to the PyTest framework this file should be searched for test functions.__author__
variable containing your PID as a str
.count
function: from exercises.ex05.utils import count
def test_count_one() -> None:
"""Test counting a single instance of the needle in the haystack."""
assert count([1, 1, 0, 1, 20, 100], 0) == 1
test_
. Can you think of other examples that are particularly interesting? You probably want to test what happens when the search value isn’t found at all and when it is found more than once. Your goal with testing is to prove the correctness of your implementation.count
Your count
function is a reproduction of a Python’s List
’s built-in count
method. Since it’s a method, rather than a function, notice the list it is counting comes before the dot and the search value is the sole argument to the method call.
>>> [1, 1, 0].count(1)
2
>>> [1, 1, 0].count(0)
1
all
In this exercise you will write a function named all
. Given a List
of ints
and an int
, all
should return a bool indicating whether or not all the ints in the list are the same as the given int
. Example usage:
>>> all([1, 2, 3], 1)
False
>>> all([1, 1, 1], 2)
False
>>> all([1, 1, 1], 1)
True
Continue by defining a skeleton function with the following signature:
all
bool
, True
if all numbers match the indicated number, False
otherwise or if the list is empty. This algorithm should work for a list of any length. Hint: remember you can return from inside of a loop to short-circuit its behavior and return immediately.You will be responsible for writing tests for this function on your own. Just be sure to remember to add the all
function to your import list at the top of your utils_test.py
file.
Note that the assert
keyword expects a boolean expression following it. You do not need to compare the return value of all
with True
or False
. Consider these example assertions:
assert all([1, 1, 1], 1)
assert not all([1, 2, 3], 1)
all
There is not a directly equivalent built-in function or method for all
in Python, but there are some idiomatic ways to achieve this. They involve the use of some concepts we have not arrived at yet (namely either sets
or slice subscripts) so we will leave this as a future exercise.
max
Next, you will write a function named max
.
The max
function is given a List of ints
, max
should return the largest in the List.
If the List is empty, max
should result in a ValueError
. We’ll show you how! Examples:
>>> max([1, 3, 2])
3
>>> max([100, 99, 98])
100
>>> max([])
ValueError: max() arg is an empty List
Define a skeleton function with the following signature:
max
int
, the largest number in the List. If the List is empty, raises a ValueError.The body of your skeleton function can begin as such, which demonstrates how to raise
an error:
def max(input: List[int]) -> int:
if len(input) == 0:
raise ValueError("max() arg is an empty List")
We will discuss errors and error handling in more detail in lecture soon. To give you a working test for the case where the input
list is empty, here is one you can use in your utils_test.py
file. First, add the following imports to the top of your test file (notice, max
was added to the list of functions imported from the utils
module – don’t forget to do this!):
Then, define this test function:
def test_max_of_empty() -> None:
"""Calling the `max` function with an empty List should raise a Value Error."""
with pytest.raises(ValueError):
empty_list: List[int] = []
max(empty_list)
You can safely ignore the type-checking error this test will give you. The grader will not take off for it.
Rediscover tests to find this test and then it should pass based on the skeleton implementation. How exactly this test works is beyond our current place in the course but the idea is this is a pytest
idiom for ensuring that this test passes if a ValueError
results in the with
block and fails otherwise.
Add additional tests to find the max
value of the list. Note, you cannot use the built-in max
function Python provides in your implementation.
max
Your max
function is a reproduction of a Python’s built-in max
function: https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#max. Python’s version works on collections of many types more broadly, while yours is specifically typed to work with a list of integers.
The following exercises are extensions of those in the previous set. These utility functions continue to emphasize practice algorithmic thinking. In this exercise you will also continue testing the functions you write by writing tests which demonstrate their correctness in a variety of cases.
is_equal
Given two List
s of int
values, return True
if every element at every index is equal in both List
s.
>>> is_equal([1, 0, 1], [1, 0, 1])
True
>>> is_equal([1, 1, 0], [1, 0, 1]))
False
Your implementation should not assume the lengths of each List are equal.
This concept is called deep equality. Two separate List
objects on the heap may be distinct objects, such that if you changed one the other would remain the same. However, two distinct objects can be deeply equal to one another if what they are made of is equal to each other in essence.
Define a function with the following signature: 1. Name: is_equal
2. Parameters: Two lists of integers. 3. Returns: True
if lists are equal, False
otherwise.
Implement the is_equal
function as described above.
is_equal
function.is_equal
Your is_equal
function is a reproduction of a Python’s List
’s built-in ==
operator when used on two List
objects. Compound types, such as List
and even custom ones such as those we will write soon, can define their own algorithms for operators such as ==
through what is called operator overloading.
>>> [1, 1, 0] == [1, 1, 0]
True
>>> [1, 1, 0] == [1, 0, 1]
False
concat
In this exercise you will write a function named concat
. Given two Lists
of ints
, concat
should generate a new List which contains all of the elements of the first list followed by all of the elements of the second list.
Define your function with the following signature.
concat
List
containing all elements of the first list, followed by all elements of the second list.concat
should NOT mutate (modify) either of the arguments passed to it.
Add tests to the ex05/utils_test.py
file which demonstrate the correctness of your concat
function. Be sure to consider edge cases which include empty lists on either side.
is_equal
Python’s List
objects use operator overloading to appropriate the +
operator for concatenation, just like with str
values:
>>> [1, 1, 0] + [1, 1, 0]
[1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0]
Note that a new List, with the elements copied from each of the operands, results from the evaluation of concatenating two lists, just like your function implements.
sub
In this exercise you will write a function named sub
. Given a List
of ints
, a start index, and an end index (not inclusive), sub
should generate a List which is a subset of the given list, between the specified start index and the end index - 1. This function should not mutate its input list.
Example usage:
>>> a_list = [10, 20, 30, 40]
>>> sub(a_list, 1, 3)
[20, 30]
Next, define a skeleton function with the following signature in ex05/utils.py
:
sub
If the start index is negative, start from the beginning of the list. If the end index is greater than the length of the list, end with the end of the list.
If the length of the list is 0, start > len of the list or end <= 0, return the empty list.
Add tests to assert the correctness of your implementation.
sub
Python has a special subscription notation called slice notation related to the built-in slice function. Typically, in Python, you would achieve the results of sub
with the following, an example of slice indexing:
>>> a_list = [10, 20, 30, 40]
>>> a_list[1:3]
[20, 30]
splice
In this exercise you will write a function named splice
. Given a List
of ints
, an index, and another List
of ints
, splice
should generate a new List. The new List should contain the Elements of the first list, with the Elements of the second list spliced in at (inserted at) the specified index. For example:
>>> splice([1, 1, 1, 1], 2, [0, 0, 0, 0])
[1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]
Define a skeleton function with the following signature:
splice
int
list, an int
index, and another int
list, where the index will be used to know where to insert the second list into the first list.List
containing elements of the second list “spliced” into those of the first.Neither input list should be mutated in the above.
If the index is negative, insert the second list before the first list.
If the index is greater than the length of the first list, append the second list directly following the fist list.
Hint: You can implement splice
in terms of two functions you previously implemented in this exercse rather than from scratch. You are encouraged to make use of the functions implemented earlier. Imagine how you can break down the splice
process in terms of other functions written, rather than not making use of any.
There are a number of edge cases you will want to carefully test for the splice
function. Think about tests for empty lists and different locations of the index in the first list.
splice
Python developers would likely combine the use of the overloaded +
operator and the slice subscription notation to pull off splice
in a simple, single line of code. See if you can figure out how, based on the examples of these concepts in earlier idioms above, after you’ve implemented your version of splice
.