Dragon Curve
Introduction
The Dragon Curve is a fractal shape that is created by recursive transformation and is named after the mythological dragon. It is a well-known shape in the field of Computer Science and has various applications in areas like computer graphics, data compression, and cryptography.
Implementation
The Dragon Curve algorithm is implemented in OCaml programming language using the following steps:
- Define two helper functions
zig
andzag
that take two points as input and return a new point that lies halfway between them but is rotated 90 degrees. - Define a recursive function
dragon
that takes four arguments: two initial points, one point in between them rotated 90 degrees, and an integern
that represents the number of iterations. - If
n
is 0, the function returns the two initial points; otherwise, it recursively calls itself with the 4 points andn-1
and then concatenates the two resulting lists. - Finally, create a canvas and draw a line connecting the list of points generated by the
dragon
function.
Step-by-step Explanation
- Define two points
p1
andp2
. - Generate a list of points using the
dragon
function withp1
,zig(p1,p2)
,p2
, and15
as arguments. This creates a list of points that generate the dragon curve when connected. - Create a canvas with width 430 and height 300.
- Draw a line connecting all the points generated by the
dragon
function using theCanvas.create_line
function. - Open the main loop of the program using
Tk.mainLoop ()
.
Complexity Analysis
The algorithm has a time complexity of O(2^n)
and a space complexity of O(2^n)
. This is because at each recursive step, the function creates two new points that generate a line segment, leading to an exponential growth in the number of points generated at each iteration. This can cause performance issues for larger values of n
. However, the space complexity can be reduced by eliminating the creation of intermediate lists, which can be achieved by using tail recursion.