Re: why are there [v e c t o r s] in Lisp?

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Aurélien Aptel <aurelien.aptel+emacs@gmail.com>
writes:

> The direction and the position you're talking about
> are geometry concepts. Linear algebra is just a tool

What do you mean "just" a tool?

> that can be used to model many things e.g.
> in mechanics to represent forces, in euclidian
> geometry to represent positions *or* directions, you
> can even used them to model text documents [1] etc.
> In pure linear algebra, "direction" and "position"
> are not defined for vectors. You could argue that
> elisp is using vectors to model a specific concept
> (constant time random access objects) and as such
> deserves its own notation, different from the list.

It seems to be like this:

- in terms of linear algebra, a plain, finite list
  with one and the same base data type as elements is
  a vector as good as any

- in terms of modeling, you can do all sorts of things
  with this concept

- in terms of Elisp programming, the vector type
  shouldn't necessarily be thought of as a linear
  algebra concept but rather another data structure
  that can be used for many purposes, just like the
  Elisp list, only most often specific purposes are
  better suited for one or the other

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