[Tutor] How to manipulate a variable whose value depends on next values of list using LC or reduce()

[Shashwat Anand]

Got it !!

@Alan, @DaveA:  Hontoni Arigato :)

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:55 PM, Dave Angel <davea at ieee.org> wrote:

> Shashwat Anand wrote:
>
>> Shashwat Anand to Bangalore
>> show details 5:31 AM (2 minutes ago)
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> I wrote an LCM function of mine as follows:
>>
>> import fractions
>> def lcm(mylist):
>>    # lcm by defination is Lowest Common Multiple
>>    # lcm (a*b) = a*b / gcd(a*b)
>>    # lcm (a, b, c) = lcm(lcm(a, b), c)
>>    # the function lcm() returns lcm of numbers in a list
>>    # for the special case of two numbers, pass the argument as lcm([a, b])
>>    sol = 1
>>    for i in mylist:
>>        sol = sol * i / fractions.gcd(sol, i)
>>    return sol
>>
>> print lcm(range(1, 11))  #gives lcm of numbers (1, 2, 3....,9 ,10)
>> print lcm([2, 3])             #gives lcm of two numbers, a special case
>> print lcm([2, 5, 6, 10])   #gives lcm of a random list
>>
>>
>> However I also did a dirty hack as an alternate approach :
>>
>> import fractions
>> l = [1]
>> print max( ( l[i-2], l.append(l[-1] * i / fractions.gcd(l[-1], i ) ) ) for
>> i
>> in range(2, 12) )[0]
>> # prints the LCM of list (1, 10)
>>
>> However to shorten the code i made it totally unpythonic.
>> Can reduce( ) or any other function be of help ?
>>
>> Let me take a test-case as an example:
>> I want to multiple all the content of a given list,
>> now say my list is lst = [2, 3, 9]
>> I can do:
>>
>> sol = 1
>> for i in lst:
>>    sol *= i
>> print sol
>>
>> However this can also be done as:
>>
>>
>>
>>> reduce( operator.mul, lst)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>> Can it be done via List Comprehension or we have to do dirty hacks as
>> mentioned above :(
>> Can the LCM function be reduced ?
>>
>> *The point is if we insert a variable( sol here in both test case and LCM
>> case), which changes its values dynamically depending upon the next values
>> of the list, how can I calculate so without going through the long way of
>> using for-construct*, which makes me feel as though i'm coding in C.
>> reduce(
>> ) or even sum( ) does helps in some cases but it constrains me as per my
>> requirement. Any pointers ?
>>
>>
>>
> Starting where Alan left off,
>
> def lcm(mylist):
>   def lcm2(a, b):
>       return a*b / fractions.gcd(a, b)
>   return reduce(lcm2, mylist)
>
> or, if you feel the need to get rid of the extra name,
>
> def lcm(mylist):
>   return reduce(lambda a,b : a*b/fractions.gcd(a,b), mylist)
>
> DaveA
>
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