# Reasoning a computation based on problem and symantics

Saturday, Dec 5, 2020

While it is important that our code be correct, it is equally important to review our work from efficiency standpoint. The number of steps that it takes for a function to compute its final value depends on the order of evaluation. Apparently, compiler can do a lot of optimization behind the scenes, and I don't know the details of that process. What we can do as programmers is see if we can optimize our function definitions using the knowledge of language symantics and something about the problem itself. While the example below is trivial, it is good to develop a mindset where we think of how our definitions get evaluated.

## Check for a leap year

Since a leap year is the one that is evenly divisible by 4, except every year that is evenly divisible by 100 unless the year is also evenly divisible by 400, we can write the following definition:

isLeapYear :: Int -> Bool
isLeapYear year =
year rem 400 == 0 ||
(year rem 100 /= 0 && year rem 4 == 0)


First we note that since the main expression is an or expression of the form e1 || e2, if e1 evaluates to False (often), e2 has to be evaluated to get final value of the entire expression. We can rewrite our expressions in terms of and as follows.

Knowing the symantics of e1 && e2, if e1 evaluates to false (often), e2 will not be evaluated and the entire expression evaluates to False. Also, within the or expression of e2 now, the first sub-expression (not divisible by 100) is more likely to be True in which case the or expression will evaluate to True without evaluating the second sub-expression (divisible by 400).

isLeapYear2 :: Int -> Bool
isLeapYear2 year =
year rem 4 == 0 &&
(year rem 100 /= 0 || year rem 400 == 0)