CODEWITHSUNDEEP
haskellrecursion
Andrei Bercea
Andrei Bercea

Reputation: 61

Haskell Recursion Function

So, what I try to do is to define recursively a function that calculates how much money I have after n years, if I start with an amount a and receive p percent of interest per year.

interest (n,a,p)
 | n > 0          = interest (n-1,a,p)
       where a = (a*p)/100
 | otherwise      = a

And it gives me this error:

E:\\Module1\week3\scripts.hs:35:2: error: parse error on input `|'
   |
35 |  | otherwise      = a
   |  ^

Can anyone tell me what I do wrong? Thank you.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 346

Answers (1)

chi
chi

Reputation: 116174

where can only be used after all the guards, and applies to all of them. For instance

f x y =
  | x > 0     = g a + x   -- a is visible here
  | otherwise = h a + y   -- and here
  where a = x + y

Further, note that your where a = (a*p)/100 will likely lead to non-termination, since a is recursively defined in terms of itself ((a*p)/100). You should use a new variable name e.g. a' = (a*p)/100. It is in general a bad idea to "redefine" an outer variable in Haskell: turning on warnings with the -Wall flag helps in detecting these issues.

Finally, note that you can also use let instead of where, and use that inside any expression. For instance

f x y =
  | x > 0 =
     let a = x + y
     in g a + x
  | otherwise = y  -- a is not visible here

One could even write

(let a = x + y in g a) + x

albeit I can not recommend this style.

Upvotes: 3

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