Box-and-pointer diagrams

As we have seen, Scheme uses cons to build lists. We now consider a graphical way to represent the result of a cons procedure. The basic idea is to use a rectangle, divided in half, to represent the result of the cons. From the first half of the rectangle, we draw an arrow to the first element of a list, its car; from the second half of the rectangle, we draw an arrow to the rest of the list, its cdr. When the cdr is empty, we draw a diagonal line through the right half of the rectangle to indicate that the list stops at that point.

For instance, the value of the expression (cons 'a null) would be represented in this notation as follows:

Since the value of the expression (cons 'a null) is the list (a), this diagram represents (a) as well.

Now consider the value of the expression (cons 'b (cons 'a null)) -- in other words, the list (b a). Here, we draw another rectangle, where the head points to b and the tail points to the representation of (a) that we already have seen. The result is:

Similarly, the list (d c b a) is the value of the expression (cons 'd (cons 'c (cons 'b (cons 'a null)))) and would be drawn as follows:

A similar approach may be used for lists that have other lists as elements. For example, consider the list ((a) b (c d) e). This is a list with four components, so at the top level we will need four rectangles, just as in the previous example for the list (d c b a). Here, however, the first component designates the list (a), which itself involves the box-and-pointer diagram already discussed. Similarly, the list (c d) has two boxes for its two components (as in the diagram for (b a) above). The resulting diagram is:

Additional discussion and examples may be found in the first few pages of section 11.3 of the textbook.

Throughout these diagrams, the empty list is represented by a null pointer, a diagonal line. Thus, the list containing the empty list, (()) -- that is, the value of the expression (cons null null) -- is represented by a rectangle with lines through both halves:

Exercise 1

Draw box-and-pointer diagrams for each of the following lists:

• ((x) y z)
• (x (y z))
• ((a) b (c ()))

Pairs that are not lists

While we consistently have discussed cons in the context of lists, Scheme allows cons to be applied even when the second argument is not a list. For example, (cons 'a 'b) is a legal expression; its value is represented by the following box-and-pointer diagram:

When Scheme is asked to print out such a value, it uses dot notation: (a . b) Here, the dot indicates that cons has been applied, but the second argument is not a list. Similarly, the value of (cons 1 'a) is the pair (1 . a), and the value of (cons "Henry" "Walker") is ("Henry" . "Walker"). Using a box-and-pointer representation, this last result would be drawn as follows:

The car and cdr procedures can be used to recover the halves of one of these improper lists:

> (car (cons 'a 'b))
a
> (cdr (cons 'a 'b))
b

Note that the cdr of such a structure is not a list.

Exercise 2

Enter each of the following expressions into Scheme. In each case, explain why Scheme does or does not use the dot notation when displaying the value.

• (cons 'a "Walker")
• (cons 'a null)
• (cons null 'a)
• (cons null (cons null null))

Exercise 3

Draw a box-and-pointer representation of the value of each expression in the previous exercise.

The pair? predicate returns #t when it is given any structure that is printed as a dotted pair, or indeed any structure that cons can possibly return as its value. (Basically, pair? determines whether the object it is given is one of those two-box rectangles.)

Recursion with pair structures

Just as lists can be nested within lists, so pairs can be nested within pairs, as deeply as you like. For instance, here is a pair structure that contains the first eight natural numbers:

To build this structure in Scheme, we can use repeated calls to cons, thus:

(cons (cons (cons 0 1)
            (cons 2 3))
      (cons (cons 4 5)
            (cons 6 7)))

or we can use the dotted-pair notation inside a literal constant beginning with a quote:

'(((0 . 1) . (2 . 3)) . ((4 . 5) . (6 . 7)))

If we have a pair structure that is constructed by repeated invocations of cons, starting from constituents of some simple type such as numbers or strings, we can use pair recursion, which adapts the shape of the computation to the shape of the particular pair structure on which we operate. In pair recursion, the base cases are the values that are not pairs, and must therefore be operated on directly. For the non-base cases -- those that are pairs -- we invoke the procedure recursively twice (once for the car, once for the cdr) and combine the values of the recursive calls to get the final result of the operation.

For instance, here is how we'd find the sum of the numbers in a pair structure like the one diagrammed above:

(define sum-of-pair-structure
  (lambda (ps)
    (if (pair? ps)
        (+ (sum-of-pair-structure (car ps))
           (sum-of-pair-structure (cdr ps)))
        ps)))

> (sum-of-pair-structure (cons (cons (cons 0 1)
                                     (cons 2 3))
                               (cons (cons 4 5)
                                     (cons 6 7))))
28

When this procedure is applied to a base case -- that is, just a number rather than a collection of numbers fitted into a pair structure -- it returns the number unchanged:

> (sum-of-pair-structure 19)
19

There is no such thing as an ``empty pair'' analogous to an empty list. Every pair has exactly two components, and it is always valid to take the car and the cdr of a pair. So the base case for a pair recursion is just any value that is not itself a pair.

Exercise 4

Define and test a procedure named cons-cell-count that takes any Scheme value and determines how many boxes would appear in its box-and-pointer diagram. (The data structure that is represented by such a box, or the region of a computer's memory in which such a structure is stored is called a cons cell. Every time the cons procedure is used, explicitly or implicitly, in the construction of a Scheme value, a new cons cell is allocated, to store information about the car and the cdr. Thus cons-cell-count also tallies the number of times cons was invoked during the construction of its argument.)

For example, the structure in the last box-and-pointer diagram shown above contains seven cons-cells, so when you apply cons-cell-count to that structure, it should return 7. On the other hand, the string "sample" contains no cons-cells, so the value of (cons-cell-count "sample") is 0.

Use cons-cell-count to find out how many cons cells are needed to construct the list (0 (1 (2 (3 (4))))). Draw a box-and-pointer diagram of this list to check the answer.

This document is available on the World Wide Web as

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~stone/courses/scheme/pairs.html

created February 21, 1997
last revised March 17, 2000

Henry Walker (walker@cs.grinnell.edu) and John David Stone (stone@cs.grinnell.edu)