Project Euler #2 in F#

Question

Project Euler Problem 2 asks for the sum of all even Fibonacci numbers below 4 million.

My first attempt at this problem using functional programming with F#. I would've liked to use some kind of take-while function to keep generating Fibonacci numbers until they fulfilled certain conditions, but alas I could not find such a thing in F#.

open System
let rec fib n = match n with
 | 0 | 1 | 2 -> n
 | _ -> fib (n - 1) + fib (n - 2)
let rec nOfFibTermsUpUntil x y = if fib (y + 1) < x then nOfFibTermsUpUntil x (y + 1) else y
[for n in 0..nOfFibTermsUpUntil 4000000 0 -> fib n]
|> List.filter (fun x -> x % 2 = 0)
|> List.sum
|> printf "The sum of Fibonacci terms up until 4,000,000 is: %d"
Console.ReadKey () |> ignore

Answer 1

I discovered an (arguably) better way of doing this in F# using Seq.unfold and tuples. I'll post the solution below.

open System
(1,1) |> Seq.unfold (fun (a, b) -> Some(a + b, (b, a + b)))
|> Seq.takeWhile (fun x -> x <= 4000000)
|> Seq.sumBy (fun x -> if x % 2 = 0 then x else 0)
|> printf "The sum of Fibonacci terms up until 4,000,000 is: %d"
Console.ReadKey () |> ignore

• 200_success: Technically, you're supposed to takeWhile x < 4000000 (not x <= 4000000) — not that it matters, since 4000000 is not a Fibonacci number.
• svick: Yeah, I think using seq instead of list is the right way here: you can't have a potentially infinite list, but you can do that with seq.

Answer 2

Your base case of fib(2) = 2 is incorrect. No variant of the Fibonacci Sequence starts with 0, 1, 2,.... You just happen to get the same answer because the problem only cares about the even-valued terms.

To take the terms under 4 million, use Seq.takeWhile.

• Overly Excessive: You're right, removing that base case will still yield the correct answer and a valid Fibonacci sequence.

Answer 3

The explicit names for things here hopefully show more clearly how unbind works.

let fibonacciSeq =
 let generator state =
 let (cur, prev) = state
 let next = cur + prev
 let state' = (next, cur)
 Some (cur, state')
 let more =
 (1, 0)
 |> Seq.unfold generator
 seq {
 0
 yield! more
 }