Laboratory: Association Lists and Searching

a. As you'll note from the provided code, we use “color table” to refer to an association list in which each entry is a list of the form '(name red green blue attribute-1 ... attribute-n).

Write 6P-style documentation for a procedure, (lookup-attributes color-name color-table), that lets you find the attributes associated with a particular color.

For example,

> (lookup-attributes "yellow" named-colors)
'("rainbow" "secondary" "web-safe")
> (lookup-attributes "Oregon salmon" named-colors)
#f
> (lookup-attributes "off white" named-colors)
'("bw")
> (lookup-attributes "green" named-colors)
'("primary" "rainbow")

You may wish to consult the documentation for assoc and lookup-color-by-name to guide you.

b. Write the procedure lookup-attributes.

Hint: You should rely on assoc to do the searching. Your goal is primarily to extract the attributes once you've found the appropriate entry.

Hint: The goal of this procedure is similar to the goal of lookup-color-by-name. You may consider using the definition of that procedure as a model for designing this procedure. If you do, remember to give an appropriate citation.

Let's explore an association list that uses values other than colors.

Sometimes it is useful to think a drawing in terms of a collection of named objects. Suppose we represent each object in the drawing as a list of length 7: name, shape, color, left, top, width, height, where the name, shape, and color are strings, the shape is either "rectangle" or "ellipse", and the remaining values are reals. For example,

(define drawing
  (list (list "circ1" "ellipse" "red" 10 10 80 80)
        (list "thin" "ellipse" "blue" 10 80 300 10)
        (list "tall" "rectangle" "green" 80 5 100 2)
        (list "ys1" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 50 10 10)
        (list "ys2" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 50 20 20)
        (list "ys3" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 55 30 30)
        (list "ys4" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 60 40 40)
        (list "ys5" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 65 50 50)
        (list "ys6" "rectangle" "yellow" 0 70 60 60)
        (list "rc" "ellipse" "red" 100 100 30 30)
        (list "oc" "ellipse" "orange" 90 110 30 30)
        (list "yc" "ellipse" "yellow" 80 120 30 30)
        (list "gc" "ellipse" "green" 80 130 30 30)
        (list "bc" "ellipse" "blue" 90 140 30 30)
        (list "ic" "ellipse" "indigo" 100 150 30 30)
        (list "vc" "ellipse" "violet" 110 160 30 30)
        (list "last" "rectangle" "white" 0 0 1 1)))

In the code for this lab, you'll see a procedure named image-draw-named-object!, which can be used to render these objects.

a. Copy the definition of drawing to the definitions pane (and be sure to make an appropriate citation). Then, using image-draw-named-object! and assoc, write an expression that tells the GIMP to draw the object named "bc" from drawing.

b. What do you expect to have happen if you use assoc to find an object in drawing called "thingy"? Check your answer experimentally.

c. The string "ellipse" appears a lot in drawing. What do you expect to have happen if you use assoc to find an object in drawing called "ellipse"? Check your answer experimentally.

Using assoc and image-draw-named-object! as helpers, write a procedure, (find-and-draw-object! image objects name), that finds an object with the given name and, if it is found, draws it in the image. If the object is not found, your procedure should raise a reasonable error.

a. Suppose we inadvertently give two objects in the same list the same name. For example, suppose we add another entry to the drawing above of the given form:

        (list "tall" "ellipse" "grey" 190 50 150 50)

What do you expect assoc to return when it is asked to search for "tall"?

b. Check your answer experimentally.

c. Write a new procedure, (find-all-objects name objects), that produces a list with all the objects with the given name. (If there are no objects with the name, it should return the empty list.)

Warning! You cannot use assoc to solve this problem. You will need to write your own recursive procedure.

Assume that we are representing objects and drawings as above, with a drawing consisting of a list of objects, and each object a list of length seven (name, type, color, left, top, width, height).

a. Write a procedure, (find-ellipses objects), that finds all the objects in the list that are ellipses.

b. Write a procedure, (find-objects-by-color color objects), that gets a list of objects whose color matches color.

c. Use these two procedures together to write an expression to identify all the red ellipses.

For some problems, it seems natural to always use a specific database, rather than to pass the database as a parameter. For example, suppose we've already set up a large list of colors, such as named-colors, and don't want the programmer to have to mention it in her code, perhaps because we don't even want her to know what we've named it.

For example, consider the following procedure that converts a color name to an RGB color.

(define color-name-to-rgb
  (lambda (color-name)
    (let ((entry (assoc color-name named-colors)))
      (if entry
          (rgb-new (list-ref entry 1) (list-ref entry 2) (list-ref entry 3))
          0))))

The strategy of using a specific database in a procedure is often called hard-coding the database.

a. Using color-name-to-rgb, convert off white to an RGB color.

b. Using color-name-to-rgb, convert olive green to an RGB color.

c. Suppose that we wanted to write the converse procedure, one that given an RGB color, finds the corresponding name. Can we still hard-code the database? If so, show how. If not, explain why not.

Write a procedure, (lookup-color-by-components r g b), that takes red, green, and blue components and finds a color which matches all three components. If you fail to find a color that matches all three components, return the empty string.

Write a procedure, (lookup-nearby-colors r g b), that takes red, green, and blue components and finds a color each of whose components is within sixteen of the corresponding component. If you fail to find a color that matches all three components, return the empty string.

a. What do you expect your procedure to return if given 255, 255, and 255 as parameters?

b. Verify your results experimentally.

c. Rewrite lookup-nearby-colors so that it returns a list of all the nearby colors, rather than just the first one. Note that if there are no nearby colors, you should return the empty list.

So far, we haven't used the last part of each entry, the attributes that someone has assigned to the color. Note that we can get those attributes by taking the cdr of the cdr of the cdr of the cdr of the entry.

a. Write a procedure, (lookup-colors-by-attribute attribute ctable), that returns a list of entries that contain the given attribute. For example,

> (lookup-colors-by-attribute "bw" named-colors)
(("black 0 0 0 "bw" "web-safe")
 ("blah grey" 153 153 153 "bw" "web-safe")
 ("medium grey" 128 128 128 "bw")
 ("off white" 250 250 250 "bw")
 ("white" 255 255 255 "bw" "web-safe"))

You may find the following procedure useful.

;;; Procedure:
;;;   list-contains?
;;; Parameters:
;;;   lst, a list
;;;   val, a value
;;; Purpose:
;;;   Determines if lst contains val.
;;; Produces:
;;;   contained?, a Boolean
;;; Preconditions:
;;;   [No additional]
;;; Postconditions:
;;;   If there is an i such that (list-ref lst i) equals val,
;;;     then contained? is true (#t).
;;;   Otherwise,
;;;     contained? is false.
(define list-contains?
  (lambda (lst val)
    (and (not (null? lst))
         (or (equal? (car lst) val)
             (list-contains? (cdr lst) val)))))

b. Suppose we wanted to find colors that were both rainbow colors and web safe. Describe a process for doing so. (Don't write a new procedure; preferably, you should do this with a few commands in the interactions pane.