What is the "functional" way of doing this?

[James Stroud]

Ricardo Aráoz wrote:
>>On Jul 30, 4:39 pm, Paul Rubin <http://phr...@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>"attn.steven.... at gmail.com" <attn.steven.... at gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>>Recursion is common in functional programming:
>>>>def f(n, l=None):
>>>>    if l == None:
>>>>        l = []
>>>>    if n > 0:
>>>>        return f(n/26, l + [n%26])
>>>>    else:
>>>>        return l
>>>>print f(1000)
>>>
>>>Right, this is functional style, but quite painful in Python (no tail
>>>recursion, and look at all that list copying).
>>
> 
> It might actually be :
> 
>     def f(n):
> 	if n > 0:
> 		return ([n%26] + f(n/26))
> 	else:
> 		return []
> 
> Wouldn't that be ok?
> 

You are still copying lists. This wouldn't:

def f(n):
   if n>0:
     yield n%26
     for i in f(n/26):
       yield i


James

-- 
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/