Assignment 2: Language Features 

CSC324 Assignment 2: Language Features 
One of the reasons Racket is commonly used in teaching programming language courses is that its powerful
macro system makes it (relatively) easy to extend the syntax of the core language in rather new ways. In
this unit of the course, we look at two particular language features:
• classes and object (based on closures)
• backtracking search (based on continuations)
This assignment, unlike the first one, is not based on one big project. Instead, you are given a set of smaller
tasks to complete. These will involve extending the two language features we’ve studied in interesting ways,
so it’s an excellent idea to review the material from lecture (and provided in the starter code)
Part 1: Extending classes
Starter code: class.rkt, containing the class macro from lecture.
Sample tests: class test.rkt, containing a few sample tests. Please note that these are quite incomplete!
Note: each of the three questions should be done independently of each other: you will submit a different
macros for each question.
1. Now that we have attributes and methods under our belt, let’s introduce some basic metaprogramming for our class system. Many programming languages have powerful introspection capabilities
for determining properties of objects and classes at runtime. These include Java’s Reflection API
(https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/reflect/) and plenty of Ruby’s Object methods
(http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.3/Object.html). In class.rkt, create a macro called class-meta
which behaves exactly the same as class, except every class has two additional attributes named
attributes and methods, which return a nested list of lists, where each inner list consists of:
• a string name of an attribute/method
• the corresponding value (which might be a function) for the instance.
Both lists should be sorted by the names of the attributes/methods, in alphabetical order. Important:
attributes and methods should not appear in the list returned by attributes. Note: your work
does not need to take into account traits (see Q2) or any object-level inheritance. That is, if you
instantiate a class and then create an object whose parent is the instantiation, accessing attributes
or methods on the new object doesn’t need to show the attributes/methods defined in the new object.
2. One of the hallmarks of object-oriented programming is the ability to reuse code for one object for
another object. The most common form of this is probably class-based inheritance, in which a class can
reuse all the code of another class through subclassing. Inheritance is limited in that only full-fledged
classes can share code. Some languages relax this condition by supporting traits. A trait is a bundle
of methods that can be added to a class, but unlike a class, are not standalone, and hence cannot have
instance objects. In order for a trait to interoperate with a class, it must access the class interface;
and so the main purpose of a trait is to augment existing functionality.
Specifically, you will add new pattern(s) to our existing class macro (renamed to class-trait) to
support the following syntax: Note that <trait ... might contain zero traits, so you might have a
subexpression that looks like (with). Such a use of the macro should do exactly what class does. If
there are name collisions for method definitions, either between traits or between a trait and the class
definition, use the following lookup rules:
( c l a s s −t r a i t <Cl a s s (<a t t r . . . ) ( with <t r a i t . . . )
[(<method <param . . . ) <body] . . . )
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The list of attributes is followed by an extra clause with a emphliteral keyword with and then a list of
trait functions which should then be automatically applied to each instance of the class. Note that
<trait ... might contain zero traits, so you might have a subexpression that looks like (with).
Such a use of the macro should do exactly what class does. If there are name collisions for method
definitions, either between traits or between a trait and the class definition, use the following lookup
rules:
• if two or more traits define the same method name, use the method of the trait that appears
earliest (left-most) in the with expression
• trait method names always take precedence over class attribute and method names
3. The last variation of the class macro we will consider will be to fix one severe limitation with the current
macro: the lack of a true constructor. We currently specify attributes of a class and make them explicit
parameters of the constructor of the class, which is not always the behaviour we want. Our current
macro cannot handle initializing an attribute to some constant default value, nor performing some
auxiliary computation before initialization. Your task is to design a new macro which behaves like the
class macro, but requires the user to define their own constructor. For the purpose of this question,
the only functionality of the constructor should be to set values for all of the attributes and return
the resulting object. Unlike the previous questions, it is up to you to design the syntax for this
behaviour. We will not be autotesting your code. There are many possible approaches for both the
syntax and how to implement it, and so you can be creative and decide on an approach that makes
sense to you. You will submit your work for this question in a separate file, constructor.rkt. This
file must contain three things:
• Your macro (you can name it whatever you like)
• Documentation describing your implementation of the macro. This should be one or two paragraphs of written text and code contained in a docstring above your macro.
• An expression which uses your macro to translate the following class definition from Python to
Racket. Note: your constructor should support (but not require) local name bindings because
you want users to be able to define it in a similar (though perhaps not identical) style to other
functions.
c l a s s MyClass :
d e f i n i t ( s e l f , a , b ) :
r = f ( a )
s e l f . x = f ( a )
s e l f . y = [ b , 1 0 0 , r ]
s e l f . z = ”you a r e c o ol ”
d e f f ( r ) :
r e t u r n r + 5
It will be tempting to use mutation to accomplish this task - don’t! There are many other viable
approaches which you can use that are purely functional in nature.
Part 2: Choices and Backtracking
Note: these questions will assume that you are comfortable with the backtracking API from lecture.
The file choice.rkt should be imported in your submission for this part, but you do not need to
submit it - it will be provided when we run tests.
Starter Code: choice uses.rkt
Sample Tests: choice tests.rkt
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4. Define function which takes a list and returns a subset of the elements of that list, represented as a list.
Calling (next) repeatedly should generate all subsets of the list, but the order in which they appear
doesn’t matter. No subset should appear more than once; sets are unordered, and so the lists ’(1 2
3) and ’(3 1 2) represent the same set, and should not both appear on repeated invocations of next.
The order in which the subsets are returned doesn’t matter.
5. Sudoku is a popular puzzle game in which you are given a partially filled grid of numbers, and must fill
in the rest of the grid according to certain constraints. In this question, you’ll express the constraints
in a function passed to the query predicate ?−, and hence write a brute force Sudoku solver. Note: the
purpose of this question is not to come up with an efficient algorithm for solving Sudoku puzzles, but
to see how we can approach a problem like this by describing the properties of a solution, and letting
“the computer” (in our case, the backtracking mechanisms we developed in lecture) do the work for
us. Now, the details: though normal Sudoku is played on a 9-by-9 game board, we will use a 4-by-4
board instead, so that the brute force approach will terminate in a non-lethal amount of time. A valid
Sudoku 4-board will have the following properties:
• Each row contains the numbers 1 through 4 exactly once
• Each column contains the numbers 1 through 4 exactly once
• Each 4-cell quarter (upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right) contains the numbers 1 through
4 exactly once.
We will represent a Sudoku board using a list of lists, where each inner list represents a row in the
board. For example, here is a representation of a valid Sudoku 4-board in Racket:
’ ( ( 1 2 3 4 )
( 3 4 1 2 )
( 4 1 2 3 )
( 2 3 4 1 ) )
A partial board will have the same structure, except with empty strings representing blank squares.
Your task is to implement the function sudoku-4, which takes a partial board, and returns a complete
board which is consistent with the partial board, and is valid according to the above rules. You should
use backtracking, and so calling next after calling sudoku-4 should yield different valid solutions to
the initial partial board.
6. Suppose we want to take our choice expressions and perform some computation over all the possible
choices; for example, compute the maximum of all possible outcomes of a choice expression. Right
now, we only have one way of doing so: accumulating all of the values into a list, and then perform
whatever computation we’d like on that list. Your task is to develop a more general tool called fold-<,
which behaves like foldl, except its last argument is a choice expression instead of a list:
( f ol d −< max 0 ( s i n (∗ (−< 1 2 3 4 ) (+ (−< 100 2 0 0 ) (−< 1 2 ) ) ) ) )
0. 9 9 4 8 2 6 7 9 1 3 5 8 4 0 6 4
Please note that the combine function should behave the same as in Racket’s foldl function: it is
a binary function whose first argument is the ”next choice” and whose second is the accumulator
parameter.
7. In a separate file called peek.rkt, copy over the existing backtracking library and modify its implementation to support a new function called peek, which returns a quote (symbol) representation of
the choices stored on the top (most recent) choice point on the stack of choices. (Side note: I have no
idea if it’s possible to present a string representation of the continuation using pattern-based macros.
Let me know if you find out!) Note that you can modify the implementation of choices as well as
other existing functions/macros, but not the public interface; in other words, your new library should
be completely backwards compatible with all your other backtracking code. Here are some examples
of the expected behaviour:
3
(−< 1 2 3 )
1
( peek )
’(−< 2 3 )
( next )
2
( peek )
’(−< 3 )
( next ) ; Note : t h i s c a l l was o r i g i n a l l y mi s si n g !
3
( peek )
” f a l s e . ”
(+ (−< 1 2 ) (−< 10 2 0 ) )
11
( peek )
’(−< 2 0 )
We will not be autotesting your submission for this question. Clearly document all of the changes you
make so that your TAs can note them.
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