5 ms·

There are all kinds of useful structures that you can make out of conses: trees (with two cells per node), infinite lists, and so on. They're also useful in con

• phyrex 10y ago
  I don't see why you can't make those out of the data structures provided - or even the Clojure conses?
  • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Well, it's nice to have a uniform cell structure, and you can't make them out Clojure conses, because Clojure conses don't really have a cdr, not as such, as Clojure's cdr cannot contain arbitrary data.
    • phyrex 10y ago
      Can't it? This seems to work just fine: (cons :a (cons '[x] (cons {:foo :bar} #{:x :y}))) and cljs.user=> (rest (cons :a (cons '[x] (cons {:foo :bar} #{:x :y})))) ;=> ([x] {:foo :bar} :x :y) Maybe I don't understand what you mean. I also don't see why a uniform cell structure would be preferable?
      • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        The result you got isn't actually what you'd get with proper cons cells. With real conses, you wouldn't get a list, you'd get an improper list, or a pair: i.e: Scheme: (define x (cons 'a (cons 'b '()))) ;> (a b) (define y (cons 'a 'b)) ;> (a . b) (cdr x) ;> (b) (cdr y) ;> b (eq x y) ;> #f If clojure doesn't behave like that, that it's not using real conses. As for why a uniform cell structure is preferable, it's a preference thing, but I feel it makes dealing with lists and other cons-based structure (mostly lists, but you get the occaisional alist or plist or tree in there too) much nicer.