►zthomae’s SICP solutions
▼3 Chapter 3
3.1 Exercise 3.1
3.2 Exercise 3.2
3.3 Exercise 3.3
3.4 Exercise 3.4
3.5 Exercise 3.5
3.6 Exercise 3.6
3.7 Exercise 3.7
3.8 Exercise 3.8
3.9 Exercise 3.9
3.10 Exercise 3.10
3.11 Exercise 3.11
3.12 Exercise 3.12
3.13 Exercise 3.13
3.14 Exercise 3.14
3.15 Exercise 3.15
3.16 Exercise 3.16
3.17 Exercise 3.17
3.18 Exercise 3.18
3.19 Exercise 3.19
3.20 Exercise 3.20
3.21 Exercise 3.21
3.22 Exercise 3.22
3.23 Exercise 3.23
3.24 Exercise 3.24
3.25 Exercise 3.25
3.26 Exercise 3.26
3.27 Exercise 3.27
3.28 Exercise 3.28
3.29 Exercise 3.29
3.30 Exercise 3.30
3.31 Exercise 3.31
3.32 Exercise 3.32
3.33 Exercise 3.33
3.34 Exercise 3.34
3.35 Exercise 3.35
3.36 Exercise 3.36
3.37 Exercise 3.37
3.38 Exercise 3.38
3.39 Exercise 3.39
3.40 Exercise 3.40
3.41 Exercise 3.41
3.42 Exercise 3.42
3.43 Exercise 3.43
3.44 Exercise 3.44
3.45 Exercise 3.45
3.46 Exercise 3.46
3.47 Exercise 3.47
3.48 Exercise 3.48
3.49 Exercise 3.49
3.50 Exercise 3.50
3.51 Exercise 3.51
3.52 Exercise 3.52
3.53 Exercise 3.53
3.54 Exercise 3.54
3.55 Exercise 3.55
3.56 Exercise 3.56
3.57 Exercise 3.57
3.58 Exercise 3.58
3.59 Exercise 3.59
3.60 Exercise 3.60
3.61 Exercise 3.61
3.62 Exercise 3.62
3.63 Exercise 3.63
3.64 Exercise 3.64
3.65 Exercise 3.65
3.66 Exercise 3.66
3.67 Exercise 3.67
3.68 Exercise 3.68
3.69 Exercise 3.69
3.70 Exercise 3.70
3.71 Exercise 3.71
3.72 Exercise 3.72
3.73 Exercise 3.73
3.74 Exercise 3.74
3.75 Exercise 3.75
3.76 Exercise 3.76
3.77 Exercise 3.77
3.78 Exercise 3.78
3.79 Exercise 3.79
3.80 Exercise 3.80
3.81 Exercise 3.81
3.82 Exercise 3.82
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3.18 Exercise 3.18

Detecting cycles can be done simply. We can traverse the list and keep a list of all the entries we’ve seen so far, and if we ever run into a node that’s already in the list of things we’ve seen, then we know we have a cycle.

(define (detect-cycle l)
  (define (update l seen)
    (cond ((null? l) #f)
          ((contains seen l) #t)
          (else
           (update (cdr l) (cons l seen)))))
  (update l '()))

One thing to notice about this procedure is that the seen list contains references to entire lists, and not just the cars of the lists. This is important: We really want to see if we pass by an entire list we’ve already seen before, not just a value we’ve seen before. Otherwise, the list ’(1 2 1 2) would contain a cycle.

The contains procedure is mostly trivial. Notice how it compares (car lst) to v – this is because every entry in the seen list is in fact a list, and (car lst) gives us one of those lists.

(define (contains lst v)
  (cond ((null? lst) #f)
        ((eq? (car lst) v) #t)
        (else
         (contains (cdr lst) v))))
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