Ingenious use of an anonymous function
Design a function f, such that:f(f(n)) == -nwherenis a 32-bit signed integer; you can't use complex numbers arithmetic.
Just stumbled across the above gem of a question whilst idly browsing Stack Overflow.
Interesting in its own right, what makes this particularly intriguing is that the question doesn't specify a language to use - indeed, the choice of language has a major say in the range of solutions available. The following solution in Python is stunningly elegant:
def f(x):
if isinstance(x, int):
return (lambda: -x)
else:
return x()
The use of a lambda function is very clever but does feel like cheating a little. Nevertheless, such a solution was a sharp reminder of the dangers of being too versed in a particular language (PHP in my case) such that it's hard to think outside the language constraints. Of course, the above solution can be implemented in any language that supports anonymous functions.
The less clever but more "natural" solution (at least to a mathematician) is for f to toggle the parity of n, multiplying by -1 only for one parity (the cases of positive and negative n need handling separately). It's fairly easy to build up the solution by considering in sequence n=0,1,2,3,… - see the following clunky PHP implementation:
function f($n)
{
if (0 == $n) return 0;
if ($n > 0) {
return ($n % 2 == 1) ? $n + 1 : 1 - $n;
} else {
return ($n % 2 == 1) ? $n - 1 : -($n + 1);
}
}
See the whole range of answers at Stack Overflow for considerably more information.
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- Posted by:
- David Winterbottom at
15.04.2009 / 23:48
Last updated 10.03.2010
- Category:
- Tidbits
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