Re: reading a variable from the user

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Thu, Oct 11 2012, PJ Weisberg wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 10, 2012, Eric Abrahamsen <
> eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>> The difference, as far as I know, is that in the first method you
> can
>> have multiple values per list (so something like (william "William"
>> "White" "xx@xxxxxx.org")), whereas the dotted cons cell notation
> (the
>> second one) only allows two atoms.
>
> FYI, '(william "William" "White" "xx@xxxxxx.org") is exactly the same
> as '(william . ("William" "White" "xx@xxxxxx.org"))
>
> For that matter it's the same as '(william . ("William" . ("White" .
> ("xx@xxxxxx.org" . nil)))).  A list is just a chain of cons cells.

Ugh, of course! If I'd thought about it for two more seconds that would
have been obvious -- that's the whole building block of lists! I wonder
if there's much practical difference between alists made of lists vs
those made of cons cells...

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 of 2012-10-10 on pellet