[Haskell-cafe] Re: Red-Blue Stack
apfelmus
apfelmus at quantentunnel.de
Sat Sep 27 14:16:48 EDT 2008
Thomas Davie wrote:
>
> Matthew Eastman wrote:
>>
>> The part of the assignment I'm working on is to implement a
>> RedBlueStack, a stack where you can push items in as either Red or
>> Blue. You can pop Red and Blue items individually, but the stack has
>> to keep track of the overall order of items.
>>
>> i.e. popping Blue in [Red, Red, Blue, Red, Blue] would give [Red, Red,
>> Blue]
>
> I wanted to add my own 2p to this discussion. I'm not dead certain I
> understand what is meant by the statement above, so I'm going to make a
> guess that when we pop an item, the top item on the stack should end up
> being the next item of the same colour as we popped.
>
> In this interpretation, here's what I think is an O(1) implementation:
>
> data RBStack a = Empty
> | More RBColour a (RBStack a) (RBStack a)
>
> data RBColour = Red | Blue
>
> rbPush :: Colour -> a -> RBStack a -> RBStack a
> rbPush c x Empty = More c x Empty Empty
> rbPush c x e@(More c' v asCs nextNonC)
> | c == c' = More c x e nextNonC
> | otherwise = More c x nextNonC e
>
> rbPop :: Colour -> RBStack a -> RBStack a
> rbPop c Empty = error "Empty Stack, can't pop"
> rbPop c (More c' v asCs nextNonC)
> | c == c' = asCs
> | otherwise = rbPop c nextNonC
>
> The idea is that an RBStack contains its colour, an element, and two
> other stacks -- the first one is the substack we should get by popping
> an element of the same colour. The second substack is the substack we
> get by looking for the next item of the other colour.
>
> When we push, we compare colours with the top element of the stack, and
> we swap around the same coloured/differently coloured stacks appropriately.
>
> When we pop, we jump to the first element of the right colour, and then
> we jump to the next element of the same colour.
>
> I hope I haven't missed something.
This looks O(1) but I don't understand your proposal enough to say that
it matches what Matthew had in mind.
Fortunately, understanding can be replaced with equational laws :) So, I
think Matthew wants the following specification: A red-blue stack is a
data structure
data RBStack a
with three operations
data Color = Red | Blue
empty :: RBStack a
push :: Color -> a -> RBStack a -> RBStack a
pop :: Color -> RBStack a -> RBStack a
top :: RBStack a -> Maybe (Color, a)
subject to the following laws
-- pop removes elements of the same color
pop Red . push Red x = id
pop Blue . push Blue x = id
-- pop doesn't interfere with elements of the other color
pop Blue . push Blue x = push Blue x . pop Red
pop Red . push Red x = push Red x . pop Blue
-- top returns the last color pushed or nothing otherwise
(top . push c x) stack = Just (c,x)
top empty = Nothing
-- pop on the empty stack does nothing
pop c empty = empty
These laws uniquely determine the behavior of a red-blue stack.
Unfortunately, your proposal does not seem to match the second group of
laws:
(pop Blue . push Red r . push Blue b) Empty
= pop Blue (push Red r (More Blue b Empty Empty))
= pop Blue (More Red r Empty (More Blue b Empty Empty))
= pop Blue (More Blue b Empty Empty)
= Empty
but
= (push Red r . pop Blue . push Blue b) Empty
= push Red r (pop Blue (More Blue b Empty Empty))
= push Red r Empty
= More Red r Empty Empty
The red element got lost in the first case.
Regards,
apfelmus
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