Lab 0.1:

Introduction to Scheme and CS61AS

“Welcome to CS 61AS, the world's best computer science course, because we use the world's best CS book as the textbook. The only thing wrong with this course is that all the rest of the CS courses for the rest of your life will seem a little disappointing (and repetitive).”

This lab runs through the basics of the Scheme programming language, and also some of the need to know information regarding CS61AS. Labs are structured so that you learn by exploring, making mistakes, asking questions, and otherwise trying things out. Have fun!

Labwork

finish this during section

Exercise 0.

Fire up the interpreter (click the link on the top of this page) and try these out, starting from the left column:

(first 'hello)               'pi
(+ 2 3)                      '+
(first hello)                (+ pi 7)
(+ 5 6 7 8)                  'hello
(first (bf 'hello))          (* pi pi)
(+)                          '(+ 2 3)
(+ (first 23) (last 45))     (define (square x) (* x x))
(sqrt 16)                    '(good morning)
(define pi 3.14159)          (square 5)
(+ (* 3 4) 5)                (first 274)
pi                           (square (+ 2 3))
+                            (butfirst 274)

What do you think the parens do? What do you think ' does? What do you think define does? Confirm with your TA.

Exercise 1.

Parens are very important in Scheme. In order to call on a procedure to do something, you MUST wrap the procedure in parens with its arguments, or the data you want it to act on. For example, from above, typing (+ 2 3) into the interpreter outputs 5. You can also include subexpressions in a procedure call in order to do more complicated things, like (+ (* 3 4) 5). However, parens don't always mean "call a procedure to do something". More on this later.

a. Translate the arithmetic expressions 48÷(2×(9+3)) and (48÷2)×(9+3) into Scheme expressions. Type them into the interpreter to check.

You saw how to define a square procedure:

(define (square x) (* x x))

After defining, you can use the procedure square to find the square of any number you want. Likewise...

b. Without using * (use square instead), define a procedure sum-of-squares, which takes two arguments, and returns the sum of the squares of the two arguments.

Exercise 2.

We've shown you some interesting procedures that allow you to do stuff to words:

Some terminology:

Keep these procedures and concepts in the back of your mind. They'll come back in later exercises and labs.

Write a function that takes a word and returns the second letter.

Exercise 3.

Scheme has some control features that allow you to choose what to do next based on a test:

Some good procedures to use for the test are >, <, and =. Also take a look at:

a. Take a moment to read through the references, and try them out in the interpreter. Then, write a procedure can-drive that takes the age of a person as an argument. If the age is below 16, return the sentence (not yet). Otherwise, return the sentence (Good to go). Make sure to test your code in the interpreter.

b. Write a procedure fizzbuzz that takes a number and outputs the word fizz if the number is divisible by 3, buzz if it's divisible by 5, fizzbuzz if it's divisible by both 3 and 5, and otherwise, the number itself. You may find remainder useful. Make sure to test your code in the interpreter.

Homework

do this in section if possible; finish the rest at home

Exercise 4.

Why did the Walrus cross the Serengeti?

Exercise 5.

See what happens when you type the following snippets of code into the interpreter:

(define (infinite-loop) (infinite-loop))

(if (= 3 6)
  (infinite-loop)
  (/ 4 2))

Now we want to see if we can write a procedure that behaves just like if. Here's our attempt:

(define (new-if test then-case else-case)
  (if test
    then-case
    else-case))

;; Let's try it out:
(new-if (= 3 6)
  (infinite-loop)
  (/ 4 2))

It didn't work!

Here is another example that breaks:

(new-if (= 3 6)
  (/ 1 0)
  (/ 4 2))

Why didn't new-if behave like if? What can you learn about if from this example?

Exercise 6.

Do the following reading: