From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
To: Louis-Guillaume Gagnon <gagnonlg@protonmail.com>
Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Question about let binding behavior
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2024 08:41:42 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZwTUJrMRixFleFvn@tuxteam.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <88c7526c-b7d9-46f8-8799-5825b97d20ba@protonmail.com>
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On Tue, Oct 08, 2024 at 06:21:03AM +0000, Louis-Guillaume Gagnon wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm a long time user but I've only recently started to dive into elisp
> programming. I'm a bit surprised by the following behavior.
>
> Let's say I write the following silly function:
>
> (defun foo (bar)
> (let ((baz '((quux . 0) (quuz . 0))))
> (if (> 10 bar)
> (setcdr (assoc 'quux baz) bar)
> (setcdr (assoc 'quuz baz) bar))
> baz))
>
> Then the following evals:
>
> (foo 1)
> => ((quux . 1) (quuz . 0))
>
> (foo 100)
> => ((quux . 1) (quuz . 100))
>
> I'm surprised that the list is not reset since I thought the binding was
> local to the function, but clearly I don't have the right mental model
> for elisp evaluation.
The binding (i.e. the "thing" linking the symbol baz to the value
'(...) is local. But what you do with that (setcdr... ) is to change
the value itself. Your function returns this (possibly changed) value.
Lisps have a different "accent" than more pure functional languages,
where values are more immutable.
> For the actual application I ended up using
> copy-tree but I'd like to understand this better -- could someone
> explain or point out the relevant sections of the manual?
Did that help?
Cheers & enjoy Lisp :-)
--
tomás
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-10-08 6:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-10-08 6:21 Question about let binding behavior Louis-Guillaume Gagnon
2024-10-08 6:41 ` tomas [this message]
2024-10-08 7:49 ` Louis-Guillaume Gagnon
2024-10-08 8:05 ` tomas
2024-10-08 16:02 ` tomas
2024-10-09 8:01 ` Louis-Guillaume Gagnon via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2024-10-09 8:13 ` Tomas Hlavaty
2024-10-09 23:39 ` Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2024-10-10 7:58 ` Tomas Hlavaty
2024-10-10 18:38 ` Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2024-10-18 11:25 ` Rudolf Schlatte
2024-10-08 8:15 ` Joost Kremers
2024-10-08 22:27 ` Michael Heerdegen via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2024-10-08 22:21 ` Michael Heerdegen via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2024-10-08 15:47 ` [External] : " Drew Adams
2024-10-09 2:28 ` Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2024-10-09 8:34 Louis-Guillaume Gagnon via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
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