Re: Documentation for car and cdr

[Karl Chen]

I agree with Alan Mackenzie's position that the docstring needs to
explain.

Yes, "car returns the first element of a list" is wrong.  But that
doesn't mean we can't add something good, helpful in addition to
the precise statement that experienced lisp hackers want ("the car
function returns the car").

The information could be in the manual.  Is there anything
currently?  I couldn't find any nodes on "cons cells" or "cdr".

The Wikipedia (licensed under GFDL) entry for "Car and cdr" is
reasonably introductory and seems accurate as far as explaining
the special case of using of car/cdr in lists as first/butfirst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_and_cdr


-- 
Karl 2006-01-25 15:58