Re: Output an alist from a function

[tomas@tuxteam.de]

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On Thu, Sep 26, 2024 at 08:23:02AM +0000, Heime wrote:
> Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
> 
> On Thursday, September 26th, 2024 at 4:43 PM, tomas@tuxteam.de <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Sep 25, 2024 at 08:30:30PM +0000, Heime wrote:

[...]

> For what I am doing, the problem is not acute and with your suggestion 
> towards mapc, I made
> 
>        ;; Initialize an empty alist to hold output
>        (let ( (output-alist '()) )
>          ;; `mapc' iterates over an alist in a manner similar to how
>          ;; `maphash' processes a hash table.
>          (mapc (lambda (entry)
>                  (let ( (waypt    (car entry))
>                         (dir-path (cdr entry)) )
>                    ;; Push the result to the front of the output alist
>                    (push (cons waypt (not (file-directory-p dir-path)))
>                          output-alist)))
>                fpln)
>          ;; Reverse the list to maintain the original order
>          (reverse output-alist)))

If all you need is to print a formatted rendering of the alist/hash,
perhaps you can skip the generation of an intermediate data structure?

(I don't know what your greater plan is, so perhaps that musing is
irrelevant)

> > You'll always have inconsistencies. Removing them is an ongoing process
> > which happens very carefully, and is in a steady state wrt introducing
> > new ones.
> > 
> > At this stage, the evolution resembles that of human languages (which
> > do have their sets of inconsistencies).
> 
> It is as Guy Steele used to describe a programming language.  I attended one
> of his speeches. 

After all, programming languages are also human languages, with all their
cultural traits, tribalities, identity facets, yadda, yadda. Had I the
choice today, I'd study programming language anthropology.

Cheers
-- 
t

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