{- Compute the digits of "e" using continued fractions. Original program due to Dale Thurston, Aug 2001 -} import System type ContFrac = [Integer] {- Compute the decimal representation of e progressively. A continued fraction expansion for e is [2,1,2,1,1,4,1,1,6,1,...] -} eContFrac :: ContFrac eContFrac = 2:aux 2 where aux n = 1:n:1:aux (n+2) {- We need a general function that applies an arbitrary linear fractional transformation to a legal continued fraction, represented as a list of positive integers. The complicated guard is to see if we can output a digit regardless of what the input is; i.e., to see if the interval [1,infinity) is mapped into [k,k+1) for some k. -} -- ratTrans (a,b,c,d) x: compute (a + bx)/(c+dx) as a continued fraction ratTrans :: (Integer,Integer,Integer,Integer) -> ContFrac -> ContFrac -- Output a digit if we can ratTrans (a,b,c,d) xs | ((signum c == signum d) || (abs c < abs d)) && -- No pole in range (c+d)*q <= a+b && (c+d)*q + (c+d) > a+b -- Next digit is determined = q:ratTrans (c,d,a-q*c,b-q*d) xs where q = b `div` d ratTrans (a,b,c,d) (x:xs) = ratTrans (b,a+x*b,d,c+x*d) xs -- Finally, we convert a continued fraction to digits by repeatedly multiplying by 10. toDigits :: ContFrac -> [Integer] toDigits (x:xs) = x:toDigits (ratTrans (10,0,0,1) xs) e :: [Integer] e = toDigits eContFrac main = do [digits] <- getArgs print (take (read digits) e)