[Tutor] using the reduce function

Alan Gauld alan.gauld at blueyonder.co.uk
Fri Jan 23 03:22:22 EST 2004


> Yet another homework problem is giving me fits.  Here
> it goes:

Coz its homework I'll only give a clue...

> Use the reduce function to find the length of the
> longest string in a list of strings.

Reduce takes the first two elements of a list and 
replaces them with the result of a function, then 
repeats until the list is single valued.

So to get the longest string just compare two 
strings and return the longest one. The final list 
contains the longest string in the original list.

Easy... :-)

Take a look at the Functional Programming page of 
my tutor for more on reduce() and its friends.

Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld



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