Programming Praxis - Big Numbers: Input And Output

In today’s Programming Praxis exercise, our task is to write functions to convert Big Numbers to and from strings. Let’s get started, shall we?

To convert from a string, we simply convert each digit to the correct value, multiplying them by the base as we go along.

readBase :: (Num a, Enum a) => a -> String -> a
readBase b ('-':xs) = - readBase b xs
readBase b xs       = foldl (\a x -> b * a + val x) 0 xs where
    val d = maybe (error "unrecognized digit") id . lookup d $ zip
            (['0'..'9'] ++ ['A'..'Z'] ++ ['a'..'z']) [0..]

To convert to a string, we divide by the base until we reach zero. The remainders form the digits of the output.

showBase :: Integral a => a -> a -> String
showBase b n = if n < 0 then '-' : showBase b (abs n) else
               map (digit . snd) $ m : reverse ms  where
    ((_:ms), (m:_)) = span ((> 0) . fst) $ iterate (flip divMod b . fst) (n, 0)
    digit d = maybe undefined id . lookup d . zip [0..] $
              ['0'..'9'] ++ ['A'..'Z'] ++ ['a'..'z']

While we’re at it let’s also make BigNum an instance of Read and Show, the typeclasses that normally handle conversion to and from strings.

instance Read BigNum where
    readsPrec _ = return . first (readBase 10) . split where
        split ('-':xs) = first ('-':) $ split xs
        split xs       = span (`elem` ['0'..'9'] ++ ['A'..'Z'] ++ ['a'..'z']) xs

instance Show BigNum where
    show = showBase 10

Some tests to see if everything is working properly:

main :: IO ()
main = do print $ readBase 10 "1234"   == ( 1234 :: BigNum)
          print $ readBase 10 "-1234"  == (-1234 :: BigNum)
          print $ readBase  2 "101010" == (   42 :: BigNum)
          print $ read "-1234"         == (-1234 :: BigNum)
          print $ showBase 10 ( 1234 :: BigNum) ==   "1234"
          print $ showBase 10 (-1234 :: BigNum) ==  "-1234"
          print $ showBase  2 (   42 :: BigNum) == "101010"
          print $ show        (-1234 :: BigNum) ==  "-1234"

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Tags: Haskell, programming, praxis, kata, bonsai, code, string, numbers, big, read, show, convert