ICS H21 • UC IRVINE • DAVID G. KAY • FALL 2009

Ninth Homework

This assignment is due at the start of lab on Monday, November 23.

(1) We're not going to make completing the second midterm a part of the homework this time. That doesn't mean you don't need to know how to do all the problems, though, because similar problems will turn up on the final exam (and, more importantly, because solving these problems represents the material you should be learning). Especially for those of you who received lower scores, it's important for you to determine for yourself that you can produce the answer to each midterm question without referring to notes or an existing solution.

(2) Just as lists can contain other lists, vectors can contain lists, or even other vectors. That's how we can represent two-dimensional tables, still with constant-time access by row and column. Read this coverage of vectors containing vectors; it's also a good example of processing complex data structures layer by layer, which has been one of our main themes this quarter.

(3) Chapter 34 of the HtDP text begins the discussion of programs that have "state"—that is, programs that save values from one invocation to the next. (This meaning of "state" is the same one we use when we talk about some system being in a "dormant state" or an "overloaded state." A system's "state" is its status, and we often implement that with saved values which we can change with assignment statements.) There aren't exercises in this chapter, but read it anyway.

(4) Chapter 35 introduces set!. You should be able to do exercise 35.2.1. But please note that using set! means your program isn't following the functional style any more; assignment statments have their uses, but in Scheme programs those uses are very limited. You should know about them, but don't start writing all your Scheme programs in the imperative style.

(5) Chapter 36 talks about the situations in which you'd choose to use "stateful" programs. Note, though, that their examples can still be accomplished in a functional style, simply by keeping the state as part of the data (having a separate field in the traffic light, for example, to say what its current color is) and passing the whole object back and forth as usual.

(6) Chapter 37 gives further examples of programs with state. The rest of the book is interesting, too, but we just don't have the time for all of it. You might note, though, the examples in Section 43.2; one use of mutation is to create data structures with cycles—that is, with interconnecting links.

Based in part on ICS H21assignments by David G. Kay from Fall 2003; modified by David G. Kay, Fall 2004, Fall 2007, Fall 2008.