PRACTICAL COMMON LISP Peter Seibel 1

CHAPTER 10 NUMBERS, CHARACTERS, AND STRINGS 2

INTRODUCTION Common Lisp provides built-in support for most of the data types typically found in modern languages: numbers (integer, floating point, and complex), characters, strings, arrays (including multidimensional arrays), lists, hash tables, input and output streams, and an abstraction for portably representing filenames. This chapter will cover the built-in “scalar” data types: numbers, characters, and strings. 3

NUMBERS Lisp was originally designed by a mathematician ( 數學家 ) as a tool for studying mathematical functions. Its numbers behave more like true mathematical numbers than the approximations of numbers. For instance Integers in Common Lisp can be almost arbitrarily large rather than being limited by the size of a machine word. And dividing two integers results in an exact ratio, not a truncated value. Common Lisp also offers several types of floating-point numbers. Common Lisp supports complex numbers—the numbers that result from doing things such as taking square roots and logarithms of negative numbers. 4

NUMERIC LITERALS For a given number of a given type, there can be many different textual representations, all of which will be translated to the same object representation by the Lisp reader. For instance, you can write the integer 10 as 10, 20/2, #xA, or any of a number of other ways, but the reader will translate all these to the same object. CL-USER> CL-USER> 20/2 10 CL-USER> #xa ; 十六進位表示法 #xa - #xf 10 CL-USER> #b1010 ; 二進位表示法 10 CL-USER> #o12 ; 八進位表示法 10 5

NUMERIC LITERALS It’s also possible to write rationals ( 有理數 ) in bases other than 10. If preceded by #B or #b, a rational literal is read as a binary number with 0 and 1 as the only legal digits. An #O or #o indicates an octal number (legal digits 0–7), and #X or #x indicates hexadecimal (legal digits 0–F or 0–f). You can write rationals in other bases from 2 to 36 with #nR where n is the base (always written in decimal). Additional “digits” beyond 9 are taken from the letters A–Z or a–z. #b10101 → 21 #b1010/1011 → 10/11 #o777 → 511 #xDADA → #36rABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ →

NUMERIC LITERALS You can also write floating-point numbers in a variety of ways. Common Lisp defines four subtypes of floating-point number: short, single, double, and long. The exponent markers s, f, d, l (and their uppercase equivalents) indicate short, single, double, and long floats, respectively. ( The letter does double duty: it marks the beginning of the exponent and indicates what floating point representation should be used for the number. The letter e indicates that the default representation (initially single-float) should be used. 1.0 → 1.01e0 → 1.0 1d0 → 1.0d → e0 → → → e-3 → E-3 → e20 → 1.23e19 123d23 → 1.23d25 7

NUMERIC LITERALS Complex numbers are written in their own syntax, #C or #c followed by a list of two real numbers representing the real( 實數 ) and imaginary( 虛數 ) part of the complex number. No complex numbers have a rational real component and a zero imaginary part, they’re represented by the appropriate rational value. #c(2 1) → #c(2 1) #c(2/3 3/4) → #c(2/3 3/4) #c(2 1.0) → #c( ) #c( d0) → #c(2.0d0 1.0d0) #c(1/2 1.0) → #c( ) #c(3 0) → 3 #c( ) → #c( ) #c(1/2 0) → 1/2 #c(-6/3 0) → -2 8

BASIC MATH The basic arithmetic operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—are supported for all the different kinds of Lisp numbers with the functions +, -, *, and /. (+ 1 2) → 3( ) → 6 ( ) → 13.0(+ #c(1 2) #c(3 4)) → #c(4 6) (- 5 4) → 1(- 2) → -2 ( ) → 2(* 2 3) → 6 (* 2 3 4) → 24(/ 10 5) → 2 (/ ) → 1(/ 4) → 1/4 If any of the arguments are complex, any real arguments are converted to the complex equivalents. ( ) → 3.0 (/ 2 3.0) → (+ #c(1 2) 3) → #c(4 2)(+ #c(1 2) 3/2) → #c(5/2 2) (+ #c(1 1) #c(2 -1)) → 3 9

BASIC MATH Because / doesn’t truncate, Common Lisp provides four flavors of truncating and rounding for converting a real number to an integer: FLOOR truncates toward negative infinity, returning the largest integer less than or equal to the argument. CEILING truncates toward positive infinity, returning the smallest integer grea ter than or equal to the argument. TRUNCATE truncates toward zero, making it equivalent to FLOOR for positive arguments and to CEILING for negative arguments. And ROUND rounds to the nearest integer. If the argument is exactly halfway between two integers, it rounds to the nearest even integer. 10 > (floor 30 4) 7 ; 2 > (ceiling 30 4) 8 ; -2 > (round 30 4) 8 ; -2 > (round 29 4) 7 ; 1 > (truncate 30 4) 7 ; 2 > (truncate 29 4) 7 ; 1

BASIC MATH Two related functions are MOD and REM, which return the modulus and remainder of a truncating division on real numbers. These two functions are related to the FLOOR and TRUNCATE functions as follows: (+ (* (floor (/ x y)) y) (mod x y)) ≡ x (+ (* (truncate (/ x y)) y) (rem x y)) ≡ x 11 > (floor 29 4) 7 ; 1 > (mod 29 4) 1 > (truncate 29 4) 7 ; 1 > (rem 29 4) 1

BASIC MATH The functions 1+ and 1- provide a shorthand way to express adding and subtracting one from a number. Note that these are different from the macros INCF and DECF. 1+ and 1- are just functions that return a new value, but INCF and DECF modify a place. The following equivalences show the relation between INCF/DECF, 1+/1-, and +/-: (incf x) ≡ (setf x (1+ x)) ≡ (setf x (+ x 1)) (decf x) ≡ (setf x (1- x)) ≡ (setf x (- x 1)) (incf x 10) ≡ (setf x (+ x 10)) (decf x 10) ≡ (setf x (- x 10)) 12

NUMERIC COMPARISONS The function = is the numeric equality predicate. It compares numbers by mathematical value, ignoring differences in type. (= 1 1) → T (= 10 20/2) → T (= #c( ) #c(1 0)) → T The /= function returns true only if all its arguments are different values. (/= 1 1) → NIL (/= 1 2) → T (/= 1 2 3) → T (/= ) → NIL (/= ) → NIL 13

NUMERIC COMPARISONS The functions, = order rationals and floating-point numbers. ( 2 3) → NIL (> 3 2) → T(< 2 3 4) → T (< 2 3 3) → NIL(<= 2 3 3) → T (<= ) → T(<= ) → NIL To pick out the smallest or largest of several numbers, we can use the function MIN or MAX, which takes any number of real number arguments and returns the minimum or maximum value. (max 10 11) → 11 (min ) → -12 (max ) → 6 14

NUMERIC COMPARISONS Some other functions are ZEROP, MINUSP, and PLUSP, which test whether a single real number is equal to, less than, or greater than zero. Two other predicates, EVENP and ODDP, test whether a single integer argument is even or odd. The P suffix on the names of these functions is a standard naming convention for predicate functions, functions that test some condition and return a boolean. Lisp also supports logarithms: LOG; exponentiation: EXP and EXPT; the basic trigonometric functions: SIN, COS, and TAN; their inverses: ASIN, ACOS, and ATAN; hyperbolic functions: SINH, COSH, and TANH; and their inverses: ASINH, ACOSH, and ATANH. It also provides functions to get at the individual bits of an integer and to extract the parts of a ratio or a complex number. 15

EXERCISE Write a function NUMCOM which can read two positive number, and calculate all the prime numbers between their sum and product values. For example: >(numcom) Please input two positive numbers: 2 7 The prime numbers between 9 and 14 are 11 and 13. Do you want to try again? Y Please input two positive numbers: is not a positive number. Do you want to try again? Y Please input two positive numbers: a 7 a is not a number. Do you want to try again? N NIL 16

CHARACTERS Common Lisp characters are a distinct type of object from numbers. The read syntax for characters objects is simple: #\ followed by the desired character. Thus, #\x is the character x. Any character can be used after the #\, including otherwise special characters such as ", (, and whitespace. We can write #\Space instead of #\, though the latter is technically legal. Other semistandard names are Tab, Page, Rubout, Linefeed( 換行 ), Return, and Backspace. 17

CHARACTER COMPARISONS The main thing you can do with characters, other than putting them into strings, is to compare them with other characters. For example: > (char= #\e #\E) NIL > (char-equal #\e #\E) T 18

STRINGS Literal strings are written enclosed in double quotes. We can include any character supported by the character set in a literal string except double quote (") and backslash (\). For examples: > "foo\"bar" "foo\"bar" 19 > (format t "foo\"bar") foo"bar NIL

STRING COMPARISONS We can compare strings using a set of functions that follow the same naming convention as the character comparison functions except with STRING as the prefix rather than CHAR. For example: > (string= "THIS" "this") NIL 20 > (string-equal "THIS" "this") T

STRING COMPARISONS The string comparators can compare two substrings. The arguments—:start1, :end1, :start2, and :end2—specify the starting (inclusive) and ending (exclusive) indices of substrings in the first and second string arguments. For example, (string= "foobarbaz" "quuxbarfoo" :start1 3 :end1 6 :start2 4 :end2 7) compares the substring “bar” in the two arguments and returns true. The :end1 and :end2 arguments can be NIL (or the keyword argument omitted altogether) to indicate that the corresponding substring extends to the end of the string. For examples: Break 10 [11]> (string= "foobarbaz" "quuxbarfoo" :start1 3 :start2 4 ) NIL Break 10 [11]> (string= "foobar" "quuxbar" :start1 3 :start2 4 ) T 21

STRING COMPARISONS The comparators that return true when their arguments differ. All of them except STRING= and STRING-EQUAL return the index in the first string where the mismatch was detected. (string/= "lisp" "lissome") → 3 (string/= "lisp" "lisp") → NIL If the first string is a prefix of the second, the return value will be the length of the first string. (string< "lisp" "lisper") → 4 (string< "lisper" "lisp") → NIL When comparing substrings, the resulting value is still an index into the string as a whole. For instance, the following compares the substrings “bar” and “baz” but returns 5 because that’s the index of the r in the first string: (string< "foobar" "abaz" :start1 3 :start2 1) → 5 ;not 2 22

EXERCISE Please write a function STRCOM, which can read two input strings STR1 and STR2 and check if STR1 is a substring of STR2 or STR2 is a substring of STR1. > (STRCOM) Please input the first string STR1: abcdefghijk Please input the second string STR2: cdefg STR2 is a substring of STR1 from position 2 to position 6. Do you want to check other strings? Y Please input the first string STR1: aaaa Please input the second string STR2: cccaaaaaaccc STR1 is a substring of STR2 from position 3 to position 6. Do you want to check other strings? Y Please input the first string STR1: abcd Please input the second string STR2: ccaacc STR1 is not a substring of STR2 and STR2 is not a substring of STR1. Do you want to check other strings? N NIL PS. Access substrings: 23