I'm trying to pattern match on a list of pairs, where I'm trying to return a list from the list of pair, however I'm having trouble figuring out where to make the recursive call. Without the recursive call I have this:
let countriesInChart (cht: chart) =
match cht with
| [] -> []
| (x,y)::tt -> [x;y]
;;
But naturally this only applies to the first pair in the list and simply returns ["countryA"; "countryB"] without the rest of the list.
With the recursive call this simply only returns an empty list:
let rec countriesInChart (cht: chart) =
match cht with
| [] -> []
| (x,y)::tt -> [x;y]::countriesInChart tt
;;
How would I make the recursive call such that all the pairs in the list would return as a list?
You have this:
[x;y] :: countriesInChart tt
This says to add a new list of two elements onto the front of a list of lists.
I don't think you want a list of lists, you just want a list. So you shouldn't be making a list of two elements.
If x and y are the same type (as I suspect they are), what you probably want is this:
x :: y :: countriesInChart tt
This says to add both x and y individually to the front of the recursively generated list.
You can also write this, which is completely equivalent:
[x; y] @ countriesInChart tt
However, this constructs a list of two elements only to throw it away. So it's a tiny bit of extra work for no benefit.