bug#75170: add-to-alist: new function

[Roland Winkler <winkler@gnu.org>]

On Sun, Dec 29 2024, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> What is the advantage of adding this function, given that add-to-list
> can be used with alists, and given that alist-get can nowadays be used
> as a generalize variable?

The advantage I see for also having the function add-to-alist is the
following:

add-to-list checks for the presence of an element in a list.  In the
case of alists, this means it checks for the presence of associations.
You cannot easily modify an existing association with add-to-list.  If
you have an alist with association (foo . bar) and you call add-to-list
with an element (foo . baz), add-to-list will not remove the association
(foo . bar), but the alist will then contain both associations.

add-to-alist checks for the presence of keys and it makes sure that each
key appears only once in an alist.  By default, it replaces the value of
an existing key.  This makes it easy to modify an existing association.
Only with the optional arg NO-REPLACE non-nil, it will preserve an
existing association.

Say, I want in my .emacs file a more complicated association for a key,
and I do not get initially what I want.  I can call add-to-alist
multiple times, till I get what I want.

Is there a simple way to accomplish this in other ways (a way that we
recommend for users in their init file if they do not want to use
customize like me)?

Would it make sense to give this functions a different name if more
often it may be used to modify existing associations in an alist instead
of adding new ones?