hi im trying to make a function in haskell that takes a number a makes a partion of it using lists i.e. for number 4
it would create [[1,1,1,1],[1,1,2],[1,3],[2,2],[4]]
. I was thinking of using list comprehension for this where it would create list x and then create further lists using numbers from [1...n] (n being the partition number I would want) where the sum of the list created would be equal to n.
The code I have created so far is-
partions (n:xs) = [[x|x<-[1...n], sum[x]==n]]|xs<-[1..]]
but obiviously it doesnt work, any suggestions?
thanks.
I suggest trying recursion: To obtain the partitions of n, iterate over the numbers i = 1 to n, and recursively generate the partitions of (n-i), the base case being that the only partition of 1 is 1 itself, and the partition of 0 is the empty list.
How about this...
import Data.List (nub, sort)
parts :: Int -> [[Int]]
parts 0 = []
parts n = nub $ map sort $ [n] : [x:xs | x <- [1..n`div`2], xs <- parts(n - x)]
Trying it:
*Main Control.Monad> forM [1..5] (print . parts)
[[1]]
[[2],[1,1]]
[[3],[1,2],[1,1,1]]
[[4],[1,3],[1,1,2],[1,1,1,1],[2,2]]
[[5],[1,4],[1,1,3],[1,1,1,2],[1,1,1,1,1],[1,2,2],[2,3]]
I think it's correct, if not efficient.
I found it helpful to define an auxiliary function, partitionsCap
, which does not let any of the items be larger than a given value. Used recursively, it can be used to only produce the monotonically decreasing results you want (i.e. no [1,3,1]
when you already have [1,1,3]
):
partitions :: Int -> [[Int]]
partitions n = partitionsCap n n
partitionsCap :: Int -> Int -> [[Int]]
partitionsCap cap n
| n < 0 = error "partitions: negative number"
| n == 0 = [[]]
| n > 0 = [i : p | i <- [hi,hi-1..1], p <- partitionsCap i (n-i)]
where hi = min cap n
At the heart of the algorithm is the idea that, when partitioning N, you take i
from n
down to 1, and prepend i
to the partitions of n-i
. Simplified:
concat [map (i:) $ partitions (n-i) | i <- [n,n-1..1]]
but wrong:
> partitions 3
[[3],[2,1],[1,2],[1,1,1]]
We want that [1,2]
to go away. Hence, we need to cap the partitions we're prepending to so they won't go above i
:
concat [map (i:) $ partitionsCap i (n-i) | i <- [hi,hi-1..1]]
where hi = min cap n
Now, to clean it up: that concat and map so close together got my attention. A little background: list comprehensions and the list monad are very closely related, and concatMap is the same as >>=
with its arguments flipped, in the list monad. So I wondered: can those concat and map somehow turn into a >>=
, and can that >>=
somehow sweet-talk its way into the list comprehension?
In this case, the answer is yes :-)
[i : p | i <- [hi,hi-1..1], p <- partitionsCap i (n-i)]
where hi = min cap n
I'm a little rusty with Haskell, but maybe the following code can guide you to find the solution.
parts :: Int -> Int -> [[Int]]
parts 0 p = [[]]
parts x p = [(y:ys) | y <-[p..x], ys <- (parts (x - y) y)]
And then you would have to call parts with x = n, and p = 1.
EDIT
I've fixed the base case when x equals 0 to return a list with a single item, being that item an empty list. Now it works fine :)