Exercises on Section 4

Exercise 9

For each of the following functions, give the signature and suggest a suitable precondition.

• (a) TOUPPER, which changes a string, containing only lower-case letters, into the corresponding string consisting of upper-case letters. (So, for example, TOUPPER(“word”) = “WORD”.)
  


• (b) REMOVELAST, which, given a sequence, deletes its last member.
  


• (c) LAST, which returns the last member of a sequence.
  

Answer

Solution

• (a) This function inputs a string and outputs a string, therefore it has signature TOUPPER : SeqOfChar → SeqOfChar. It requires a precondition that the input sequence consists entirely of lower-case letters.
  


• (b) The members of the sequence may come from any set, which we will denote by X. The input is a sequence and the returned value is also a sequence. So the signature is REMOVELAST : SeqOfX → SeqOfX . The input sequence should contain at least one member (otherwise there is no last member to delete), so we need a precondition that the input sequence is not empty.
  


• (c) This is similar to (a), except that the returned value is an item from X, rather than a sequence. The signature is LAST : SeqOfX → X. We again need the precondition that the input sequence is not empty.
  

Exercise 10

Suppose that the days of the week are represented by numbers, with Mon-day represented by 1, Tuesday represented by 2, and so on, with Sunday represented by 7. Describe a function TOMORROW2, giving the next day with Days represented in this way.

Answer

Solution

You may have given this description.
function TOMORROW2(d in Int) return in Int
pre d is in the set {1,2,3,4,5,6,7}.
post The returned value is t, where:

• if d = 1 then t = 2
  


• if d = 2 then t = 3
  


• if d = 3 then t = 4
  


• if d = 4 then t = 5
  


• if d = 5 then t = 6
  


• if d = 6 then t = 7
  


• if d = 7 then t = 1.
  

Or you may have given a shorter description, such as:
function TOMORROW2(d in Int) return in Int
pre 1 ≤ d ≤ 7.
post The returned value is t, where:
t = d + 1 if 1 = d = 6;
t = 1 if d = 7.
Either of these answers is fine.

Exercise 11

• (a) With s = “abcd”, evaluate each of:
  
  • (i) AT(1, s);
    
  
  
  • (ii) PUT(2, s, AT(1, s)).
    
  
  


• (b) For a general sequence s, describe how the sequence PUT(2, s, AT(1, s)) is obtained from s.
  

The functions AT and PUT were described in Activity 16.

Answer

Solution

• (a)(i) With s = “abcd”, AT(1,s) = ‘a’.
  


• (ii) Then PUT(2,s,AT(1,s)) = PUT(2,“abcd”,‘a’) = “aacd”.
  


• (b) In general, PUT(2,s,AT(1,s)) is formed by replacing the second member of the sequence s with a copy of the first member of s.