22a. Helpers: Count Divisors

Warmup

Write a function count-div: number(k) number(n) -> number that gives 1 if k divides n and 0 otherwise.

Warmup Solution

 (define (count-div k n)
    (cond [(= 0 (remainder n k))
            1]
          [else
            0]
            
 (check-expect (count-div 3 6) 1)
 (check-expect (count-div 4 6) 0)

Count-divisors example

 (count-divisors 2) => 1 + 1
 (count-divisors 3) => 1 + 0 + 1
 (count-divisors 4) => 1 + 1 + 0 + 1
 (count-divisors 5) => 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1

Notice that there is not a pattern of repeating previously used results! See the longer list of factors to confirm:

1 => 1
2 => 1,2
3 => 1,3
4 => 1,2,4
5 => 1,5
6 => 1,2,3,6
7 => 1,7
8 => 1,2,4,8
9 => 1,3,9

This means that you cannot write a recursive function the way we have been writing them. (count-divisors 5) has nothing to do with (count-divisors 4).

Count-divisors walkthrough

It really looks like we need to keep track of two things:

• what number we are counting the divisors for (always the same, let’s call it end)
• the number that we are test dividing (changes, let’s call it start)

Purpose: find how many divisors of end there are between start and end including both start and end.

Skeleton:

(define (count-divisors-help start end)
  ; not finished
  0)

Now you write examples. You could abbreviate this function’s name as cdh if writing on paper.

Examples

Your examples should look like this list below (abbreviating count-divisors-help as cdh:

(cdh 1 6) => 4
(cdh 2 6) => 3
(cdh 3 6) => 2
(cdh 4 6) => 1
(cdh 5 6) => 1
(cdh 6 6) => 1

Finale

You know there are two steps to writing a recursive function:

1. make sure it stops, when it should stop; and
2. make sure it keeps going when it should keep going.

Stops

You can write a conditional that always gets the right answer in one case. Try it!

Keep going

You can see that there could be a recursive function call with start increasing by one each time, because the answer for start=3 builds off the answer for start=4.

The two ingredients for this part are:

1. (count-divisors-help (+1 start) end)
2. (count-div start end)

You have to try writing the rest of the function now!

Answer

I hope you have worked through each step and tried to understand it before reading the solution.

Bare-bones solution and a complete solution with checks, straight from lecture.