List Commands Library for 50g

[John Keith]

(10-05-2017 08:18 PM)DavidM Wrote:  Another question (actually two)

A question has come up about the "count" argument that is passed to LSDIV. In its present form, the count argument for LSDIV designates the number of sublists to create:

{ 1 2 3 4 5 6 } 2 LSDIV => { { 1 2 3 } { 4 5 6 } }

It has been suggested that the count argument should represent the number of sublist elements in each sublist instead of the count of sublists:

{ 1 2 3 4 5 6 } 2 LSDIV => { { 1 2 } { 3 4 } { 5 6 } }

Once again, I am ambivalent about this and don't have a strong preference in either direction. So...

Question 3: Which quantity do you think the count argument should specify for LSDIV?

• 3A=Sublist Count
• 3B=Sublist Size
  

Related to the above is a similar question for LDIST. The count argument for that command currently specifies the number of sublists to distribute the list elements into:

{ 1 2 3 4 5 6 } 2 LDIST => { { 1 3 5 } { 2 4 6 } }

With a similar treatment to the above question, the following would be the new result:

{ 1 2 3 4 5 6 } 2 LDIST => { { 1 4 } { 2 5 } { 3 6 } }

My own personal preference for this one is to keep it the way it is, mostly because I tend to think of the LDIST/LCLLT pair as being focused on "count of piles" instead of "size of piles" (LDIST was originally created while thinking of distributing cards into N hands). But I wouldn't call this a strong preference; I have no problem going with the consensus on this, regardless of the outcome.

Question 4: Which quantity should the count argument specify for LDIST?

• 4A=Sublist Count
• 4B=Sublist Size
  

While I personally prefer 3B and 4B, preceding either LDIST or LSDIV by OVER SIZE SWAP / will convert one version into the other. As long as the method chosen is that preferred by most people, I don't think it is worth making two separate versions of each command.

I don't see how the connection between LCLLT and LDIST is dependent on whether sublist count or sublist size is used, but I do think it is important that LDIST and LSDIV work the same way.

On the other hand, thinking about these commands made me wonder if it would be useful to have another command which would redistribute the sublists, e. g. converting {{ 1 2} { 3 4 } { 5 6 } { 7 8 } } into { { 1 2 3 4 } { 5 6 7 8 } } or vice versa. Of course this could also be done with user code but it would be substantially longer and slower than a built-in command.

John