Continuation Passing Style

April 3, 2018

Following the Wikipedia article, we give the continuation passing style version of a function to compute the hypotenuse of a right triangle using the Pythagorean theorem; here are normal and continuation passing style versions:

(define (pyth x y)
  (sqrt (+ (* x x) (* y y))))
(define (pyth& x y k)
  ((cps *) x x (lambda (x2)
                 ((cps *) y y (lambda (y2)
                                ((cps +) x2 y2 (lambda (x2+y2)
                                                 ((cps sqrt) x2+y2 k))))))))
> (pyth& 3 4 (lambda (x) x))
5

You can run the program at https://ideone.com/kPFH79.

Pages: 1 2

Posted by programmingpraxis
Filed in Exercises
1 Comment »

One Response to “Continuation Passing Style”

  1. Daniel said
    May 25, 2018 at 1:35 AM

    Here’s a solution in Python 3 that implements greatest common divisor for non-negative arguments, in continuation passing style.

    import operator

def cps(fn):
  return lambda *args, **kwargs: args[-1](fn(*args[:-1], **kwargs))

cp_eq = cps(operator.eq)
cp_mod = cps(operator.mod)

def cp_gcd(a, b, fn):
  return cp_eq(b, 0, lambda x: fn(a) if x else cp_mod(a, b, lambda y: cp_gcd(b, y, fn)))

if __name__ == "__main__":
  cp_print = cps(print)
  cp_gcd(100, 15, lambda x: cp_print(x, lambda _: None))

    Output:

    5

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