chapter 3Construction Techniques

When we build, let us think that webuild forever.

—John Ruskin (1819–1900)

To construct an object, we need some kind of description. If we’re lucky, the description might include a construction technique. Otherwise, we may need to use our wits and our experience to construct the object. This chapter focuses on gaining some construction experience.

The only way to learn a technique is to use it on a wide variety of problems. The technique of inductive definition for describing a set will be applied to various sets of numbers, strings, lists, binary trees, and Cartesian products. The technique of recursive definition for describing a function or procedure will be applied to processing numbers, strings, lists, ...

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