6.11: Exercises

Exercise $\PageIndex{1}$

Draw a stack diagram for the following program. What does the program print?

def b(z):
    prod = a(z, z)
    print(z, prod)
    return prod

def a(x, y):
    x = x + 1
    return x * y

def c(x, y, z):
    total = x + y + z
    square = b(total)**2
    return square

x = 1
y = x + 1
print(c(x, y+3, x+y))

Exercise $\PageIndex{2}$

The Ackermann function, A(m, n), is defined:

$$\begin{cases} n+1 & \text{if $m=0$} \\ A(m-1, 1) & \text{if $m > 0$ and $n = 0$} \\ A(m-1, A(m, n-1)) & \text{if $m > 0$ and $n > 0$} \end{cases} \nonumber$$

See http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function. Write a function named ack that evaluates the Ackermann function. Use your function to evaluate ack(3, 4), which should be 125. What happens for larger values of m and n?

Solution

http://thinkpython2.com/code/ackermann.py.

Exercise $\PageIndex{3}$

A palindrome is a word that is spelled the same backward and forward, like “noon” and “redivider”. Recursively, a word is a palindrome if the first and last letters are the same and the middle is a palindrome.

The following are functions that take a string argument and return the first, last, and middle letters:

def first(word):
    return word[0]

def last(word):
    return word[-1]

def middle(word):
    return word[1:-1]

We’ll see how they work in Chapter 8.

1. Type these functions into a file named palindrome.py and test them out. What happens if you call middle with a string with two letters? One letter? What about the empty string, which is written '' and contains no letters?
2. Write a function called is_palindrome that takes a string argument and returns True if it is a palindrome and False otherwise. Remember that you can use the built-in function len to check the length of a string.

Solution

http://thinkpython2.com/code/palindrome_soln.py.

Exercise $\PageIndex{4}$

A number, a, is a power of b if it is divisible by b and a/b is a power of b. Write a function called is_power that takes parameters a and b and returns True if a is a power of b.

Note

You will have to think about the base case.

Exercise $\PageIndex{5}$

The greatest common divisor (GCD) of a and b is the largest number that divides both of them with no remainder.

One way to find the GCD of two numbers is based on the observation that if r is the remainder when a is divided by b, then gcd(a, b) = gcd(b, r). As a base case, we can use gcd(a, 0) = a.

Write a function called gcd that takes parameters a and b and returns their greatest common divisor.

Credit

This exercise is based on an example from Abelson and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.