Alexander Burger <[email protected]> writes:
Hi Alex,
>> > In PicoLisp, a property list cannot be seen separated from a symbol.
>> > After all, these are properties OF a symbol. It is just an
>> > implementation detail that they are a list internally.
>>
>> not in PicoLisp, but e.g. in Emacs Lisp there are standalone plists like
>> the above, and functions like plist-{get|put|member} to work with them
>
> OK, but then I feel that they use the wrong term in Emacs Lisp. A
> "property" is something an item *has*, i.e. a symbol in Lisp.
>
> A stand-alone list of key-value pairs is traditionally called an
> "association list".
yes, the naming is confusing
>> Yes, named parameters is my use-case, e.g. wrapping an R function like
>> plot() with *many* named parameters, most of them with decent default
>> values and thus omitted in function calls, in PicoLisp glue code.
>>
>> > What exactly would be your goal?
>>
>> there are actually two goals:
>>
>> 1. create functions with named parameters
>
> Yes. So the approaches shown in the rosetta code tasks help?
they did, after some experimenting
>> 2. use flat lists like (:a b :c d) like alists ((:a . b) (:b . c))
>
> You can use a flat list with 'memq' (instead of 'assoc' or 'asoq'):
>
> : (cdr (asoq 'b '((a . 1) (b . 2) (c . 3))))
> -> 2
>
> : (cadr (memq 'b '(a 1 b 2 c 3)))
> -> 2
ok, I see, so no need for more syntax.
Thanks!
--
cheers,
Thorsten
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