[Haskell-cafe] building a regular polygon

[Frank Buss]

> (*) Exercise 2.2 
> 
> Define a function regularPolygon :: Int -> Side -> Shape such that
> regularPolygon n s is a regular polygon with n sides, each of length
> s. (Hint: consider using some of Haskell's trigonometric 
> functions, such
> as sin :: Float -> Float, cos :: Float -> Float, and tan :: Float ->
> Float.)

I'm a Haskell newbie, too, but I would use the angle between the line, which
is defined from the point of orign to every corner of the polygon, and a
coordinate axis. Then I would add some Postscript output for easier testing.

http://www.frank-buss.de/tmp/polygons.png

import System

type Shape = [Vertex]
type Side = Float
type Vertex = (Float, Float)

regularPolygon :: Int -> Side -> Shape
regularPolygon n s = (buildList n)
    where buildList 0 = []
          buildList i = let x  = cos(alpha) * s
                            y  = sin(alpha) * s
                            alpha = 2*pi/(fromIntegral n)*(fromIntegral i)
                        in (x,y) : buildList (i-1)

showVertex vertex = show (fst vertex) ++ " " ++ show (snd vertex)

postscriptPolygon n s =
    (showVertex first ++ " moveto\n")
    ++ (unlines (map (\vertex -> (showVertex vertex ++ " lineto")) rest))
    ++ (show (fst first) ++ " " ++ show (snd first) ++ " lineto") ++ "\n"
    where poly = regularPolygon n s
          first = head poly
          rest = tail poly

main = do
    let file = "c:\\tmp\\test.ps"
    writeFile file
        ("20 20 scale 0.1 setlinewidth\n"
        ++ "5 5 translate\n"
        ++ (postscriptPolygon 4 4)
        ++ "8 4 translate\n"
        ++ (postscriptPolygon 7 2)
        ++ "stroke showpage\n")
    system ("c:\\Programme\\gs\\gs8.15\\bin\\gswin32.exe -g500x500 " ++
file)

-- 
Frank Buss, fb at frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de