Music 220b: Winter 2001
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, instructor
Christopher Burns, teaching assistant
Tamara Smyth, teaching assistant

Week 2: lists - the fundamental Lisp data type

Lists are the canonical data structure of the Lisp programming language. Lisp programs are themselves expressed as lists; there is no fundamental difference in structure between a piece of "data" like '(1 2 3 4) and a "program" (or function) like (defun square (x) (* x x)). Hence the lisp truism that "there is no distinction between program and data," and the possibility of writing programs which themselves write programs....

Guy Steele's online Lisp manual has a chapter on lists with more information.

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