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Programming-Idioms

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  • Lisp

Idiom #20 Return two values

Implement a function search which looks for item x in a 2D matrix m.
Return indices i, j of the matching cell.
Think of the most idiomatic way in the language to return the two values at the same time.

(defun mysearch (x m)
  (loop for i below (array-dimension m 0)
        do (loop for j below (array-dimension m 1)
                 when (eql x (aref m i j))
                 do (return-from my-search
                                 (values i j)))))
let search = (x, m) => {
    let i, j, M = m.length, N
    for (i = 0; i < M; ++i) {
        N = m[i].length
        for (j = 0; j < N; ++j)
            if (m[i][j] == x)
                return [i, j]
    }
    return
}
function search(m, x) {
    for (var i = 0; i < m.length; i++) {
        for (var j = 0; j < m[i].length; j++) {
            if (m[i][j] == x) {
                return [i, j];
            }
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Return an array if found, or false if not found.
type Matrix is array (Positive range <>, Positive range <>) of Integer;

function Search (M : Matrix; X : Integer; I, J : out Integer) return Boolean is
begin
   for K in M'Range (1) loop
      for L in M'Range (2) loop
         if M (K, L) = X then
            I := K;
            J := L;
            return True;
         end if;    
      end loop;
   end loop;

   return False;
end Search;

New implementation...
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