Tag: arguments object

FCC Advanced Algorithm Scripting Challenge – ‘Symmetric Difference’

Let’s tackle another Free Code Camp advanced algorithm – ‘Symmetric Difference’.  The challenge here is to ‘create a function that takes two or more arrays and returns an array of the symmetric difference (△ or ⊕) of the provided arrays.’

The symmetric difference of two sets of elements is the set that occurs in either one of the two sets, but not both (i.e. the symmetric difference of [1,2,3,4] and [3,4,5,6] is [1,2,5,6]).  For more reading on symmetric difference, check out this wiki page.

Free Code camp gives us the following as a starting point:

This is another case where we have to write a function for which we need to handle an unknown number of arguments.  To accomplish this, we’ll be using the arguments object.  I’ve covered the arguments object in a previous post, ‘Seek and Destroy’.  If you are unfamiliar with or would like a refresher of the arguments object, please check it out.

One of the helpful hints FCC provides us with is a link to the Array.prototype.reduce() method.  The arr.reduce method is a great way to cycle through and apply a function to each element of an array.

The arr.reduce method takes 2 arguments, a callback function (which will be applied to each element of the array) and an initial value (the element to provide as the first argument to the first callback function call – see here for more).

If you’re new to JavaScript, or somewhat unclear of what a callback function is, JavaScriptIsSexy.com has an excellent post on callbacks.

The callback takes a possibility of 4 arguments – previousValue, currentValue, currentIndex and array.  This is important, as it means when we write our callback function, we will have access to these 4 values within the function (for further clarity on exactly what the four values are, check out the MDN link mentioned previously).

I think we should break down this challenge into two main problems.  We need to:

  • Write a function that returns an array of the symmetric difference (⊕) between two given arrays
  • Use this function to handle an unknown number of arguments. For example:
    • find (arg1 ⊕ arg2)
    • if there’s an agr3, find arg3 ⊕ (arg1 ⊕ arg2)
    • continue for argX

At this point, I’m going to start discussing my solution to the problem.  If you’re working through FCC, I’d suggest attempting a solution on your own given what we’ve discussed above. Otherwise, proceed on…

Spoilers_ahead

Let’s start by writing the function we’ll use to calculate the symmetric difference between two arrays.

In other words, we need to write a function that receives two arrays as arguments, then returns an array of the numbers that are in one of the argument arrays, but not both.

One way to do this is to

  • create a new empty array (curDiff) to store the symmetric diff
  • use arr.reduce() to cycle through each array (need to compare each array against the other, not just one against the other)
  • in the callback function of arr.reduce
    • check if an element is in the other array or in the curDiff array (to prevent duplicates in curDiff)
    • if not – push element to curDiff
      • hint – arr.indexOf() will return -1 if the given element is not found
  • return curDiff

Here’s the JavaScript code:

We now have a function (findSymDiff()) that we can use within our main function to get the symmetric difference between two arrays.  We now have to set up the logic to handle an unknown number of parameters received by our main function.

Our logic (using the arguments object) can look something like this:

  • create new array (symDiff) to store the array returned by findSymDiff()
  • compare arguments[0] to arguments[1] using findSymDiff()
  • cycle through argument[]
    • compare symDiff to arguments[x]

To accomplish this, we can set up a simple for loop.

If we set

we can call

in our for loop starting at i=1 and loop while i<arguments.length.

Then all we have to do is return symDiff!

Here’s how everything looks when we put it together:

This solution passes all of the FCC test cases.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave comments or additional solutions below.  And if you’re working through Free Code Camp, hopefully this helped straighten out the code.

-Jeremy

 

FCC ‘Seek and Destroy’

This post will work through ‘Seek and Destroy’, one of freeCodeCamp‘s basic algorithm scripting challenges.  This challenge will help us introduce the Arguments object and callback functions.

The Seek and Destroy challenge states that ‘provided with an initial array (the first argument in the destroyer function), followed by one or more arguments’ we need to write a function that will remove the values of all the arguments given after the initial array, from the initial array.

Sounds confusing, I know…  Let’s visualize it to clear things up.

 

One of the major problems we have lies with ‘followed by one or more arguments’…  If we don’t know how many arguments there will be, how do we write a function to handle them?

The answer to that comes in the form of the Arguments object.  JavaScript provides a local variable ‘arguments’ that acts like an array with an element for each argument passed to the function.  You access the arguments just like you would an element of any other array like so:

The arguments object makes solving this algorithm challenge much easier.  Looking forward at ways to solve this problem, we need to a) access the arguments we need to delete from the initial array and b) somehow remove those arguments from the array.

Storing arguments for easy access

The first thing we’ll do is create a new array and store all the arguments (other than the initial array) in it.

As you can see, arguments can be treated like any other array…  Here, we used the length property and looped through arguments (starting at element 1 so as to avoid the initial array, which will be passed in as the first argument, or arguments[0]).  Setting it up this way will handle any number of arguments passed to the destroyer function.

The push() method in JavaScript is used to ‘push’ new elements on to the end of the calling array.

Tools we’ll need to remove arguments from the array

In order to remove the arguments from the initial array, we will use the filter() method.  The filter method introduces a concept we haven’t talked about here at CrookedCode: the callback function.

A Quick note on functions in JavaScript

The power of functions, and what they allow you to do, are core to successful JavaScript programming.  Functions can be passed to and returned from other functions.  They can also be stored as variables.

A function that accepts another function as an argument is called a higher-order function, whereas, the function that is passed as the argument is called a callback function.  The Eloquent JavaScript chapter on functions is a great tutorial on the use of functions in JavaScript.

Eloquent JavaScript also devotes an entire chapter to higher-order functions.  I highly recommend reading and working through the examples in both of these chapters.  If you’re looking for something a little quicker, JavaScriptissexy.com has an excellent article on understanding callbacks and higher order functions.

The filter() method accepts a callback function and performs that callback on every element in the calling array.  If the callback returns true for a given element, that element is kept.  If the callback returns false, obviously, that element is not kept.

As stated above, filter() calls the callback function on every element of the calling array, but it does not mutate that array.  Therefore, you must save the kept elements as a new array.

The one final tool we’ll need before we try to solve this algorithm is the array.indexOf() method.  indexOf() will return the first index at which a given value is found.  If the given value is not found, indexOf() returns -1.

Putting it all together…. (finally)

We’ve already created argArr[] to hold the values that we need to delete from the initial array.  We now need to write a callback function for filter() that will return true if we want the element to stay and false if we want to delete that element.

We know that indexOf() will return -1 if a given value is not found.  We also know that we want to keep elements of the initial array that aren’t found in argArr[].  So, for each element of the initial array, lets call argArr.indexOf(), and return true for values of -1.  Therefore, we’ll be returning true for (and keeping) values that aren’t in argArr[].

Like so:

Wow…  This post covered a bunch of stuff we haven’t previously gone over here at CrookedCode, hopefully this helped straighten out the code for you.  See you next time…

-Jeremy