This puzzle was originally posted on Rosetta Code: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Heronian_triangles
aspect hacked up this demo using sqlite and some little expression sugar (let and = below Let's assign with let), but a flaky browser leaves me unable to post it there. Probably let and = should be eliminated before it's posted, as they're hardly good style (though convenient as heck for prototyping!). It previously used loop but that's trivial to flatten and doesn't uglify much.
I think using sqlite is an interesting innovation vs other solutions on RC, as it's not nearly so trivial in other languages, but speaks well to the reporting requirements given in the task. Just look how pretty main is!
primitive_triangles takes rather a long time to run. I'm sure there are further optimisations that can be applied, though the obvious ones are there. I look forward to some of the local math wizards suggesting triples that could be safely ignored.
If someone active on RC wants to post this (perhaps cleaned up?), please be my guest, and annotate this page so that it can be cleaned up or used for something more apt.
if {[info commands let] eq ""} {
#make some math look nicer:
proc let {name args} {
tailcall ::set $name [uplevel 1 $args]
}
interp alias {} = {} expr
namespace import ::tcl::mathfunc::* ::tcl::mathop::*
interp alias {} sum {} +
# a simple adaptation of gcd from https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/2891
proc coprime {a args} {
set gcd $a
foreach arg $args {
while {$arg != 0} {
set t $arg
let arg = $gcd % $arg
set gcd $t
if {$gcd == 1} {return true}
}
}
return false
}
}
namespace eval Hero {
# Integer square root: returns 0 if n is not a square.
proc isqrt? {n} {
let r = entier(sqrt($n))
if {$r**2 == $n} {
return $r
} else {
return 0
}
}
# The square of a triangle's area
proc squarea {a b c} {
let s = ($a + $b + $c) / 2.0
let sqrA = $s * ($s - $a) * ($s - $b) * ($s - $c)
return $sqrA
}
proc is_heronian {a b c} {
isqrt? [squarea $a $b $c]
}
proc primitive_triangles {db max} {
for {set a 1} {$a <= $max} {incr a} {
for {set b $a} {$b <= $max} {incr b} {
let maxc = min($a+$b,$max)
for {set c $b} {$c <= $maxc} {incr c} {
set area [is_heronian $a $b $c]
if {$area && [coprime $a $b $c]} {
set perimiter [expr {$a + $b + $c}]
$db eval {insert into herons (area, perimiter, a, b, c) values ($area, $perimiter, $a, $b, $c)}
}
}
}
}
}
}
proc main {db} {
$db eval {create table herons (area int, perimiter int, a int, b int, c int)}
set max 200
puts "Calculating Primitive Heronian triangles up to size length $max"
puts \t[time {Hero::primitive_triangles $db $max} 1]
puts "Total Primitive Heronian triangles with side lengths <= $max:"
$db eval {select count(1) count from herons} {
puts "\t$count"
}
puts "First ten when ordered by increasing area, perimiter, max side length:"
$db eval {select * from herons order by area, perimiter, c limit 10} {
puts "\t($a, $b, $c) perimiter = $perimiter; area = $area"
}
puts "All of area 210:"
$db eval {select * from herons where area=210 order by area, perimiter, c} {
puts "\t($a, $b, $c) perimiter = $perimiter; area = $area"
}
}
package require sqlite3
sqlite3 db :memory:
main dbaspect: it turns out that contemporaneous with my writing this, dbohdan posted a blog on Data Munging which highlights a similar technique of using sqlite to store and then generate multiple views of structured data. Similar to Danyil's experience, I also started off by keeping data generated by primitive_triangles in nested dictionaries. This led to data representation issues dominating both the nested loop and the reports, making their code both ugly and fragile: if I wanted to optimise representation, the loop and potentially all the reports would need to be touched. Optimising for readability seemed full of bad tradeoffs. Simply adding package require sqlite3 made these problems go away. Best of all, (tcl-)sqlite's wonderful binding capabilities eliminate the boilerplate (de-)serialisation code this approach would involve in most other languages.