Learning Exercise
The Result type is the solution in the Elm language for error reporting and an enabler for error recovery. It is somewhat similar to the Maybe type, but where Maybe can be returned by functions that may fail, it doesn't tell you anything about why it failed. Result includes this context about why something failed.
The Result type is defined as follows:
type Result error value
= Ok value
| Err error
This is known as a "custom type" definition in Elm terminology.
The error and value in OK value and Error error represent a type variable, meaning it can be any type, such as Int, Bool or String.
As such, a Result String Int is a variable that is expected to contain an Int, and if there is an error this will be represented as a String.
There is a Result module with lots of useful helper functions for result.
In this exercise, you'll be applying the rules of the game of Go. The rules themselves are already written, you just need to apply them in order to update the Game and to handle any errors / violations of the rules.
The game is represented as follows:
type Player
= Black
| White
type alias Game =
{ whiteCapturedStones : Int
, blackCapturedStones : Int
, player : Player
, error : String
}
There are 4 rules in the game:
oneStonePerPointRule)captureRule)libertyRule)koRule)Write the content of the applyRules function, which takes an initial Game and a set of rules, and returns the new Game after the rules have been applied.
oneStonePerPointRule, libertyRule and koRule all check for violations of the rules, and may return an error, and so have the return type of Result String Game. If any of these rules fail, the original game should be returned, but with the error field updated with the relevant error.
captureRule does not check for violations and so cannot fail (although it can return a changed Game) and so has the return type of Game.
If all the rules pass, then any changes to Game from the rules should be kept, and the player should be changed. The changePlayer function is provided to do this.
applyRules : Game -> Rule -> NonValidatingRule -> Rule -> Rule -> Game
applyRules game oneStonePerPointRule captureRule libertyRule koRule =
--> If all rules pass, return a `Game` with all changes from the rules applied, and changePlayer
--> If any rule fails, return the original Game, but with the error field set
Edit via GitHub
Sign up to Exercism to learn and master Elm with 22 concepts, 90 exercises, and real human mentoring, all for free.