Re: Basic questions about elisp

[Francis Moreau]

On 6 nov, 22:18, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) wrote:
> Francis Moreau <francis.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> >>> When I wrote '(2), I suppose the elisp interpreter to create a new
> >>> list.
>
> >> It does so, but at read time.  Not execution time.
>
> > Ah ok I see what you mean now.
>
> > That's a pretty important point, is this part covered by the elisp info ?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Actually the same stands for the implementation of the list, where
> > nconc, length... are O(n). I wouldn't have thought that lists are really
> > implemented by the car & cdr thing only.
>
> Why not?  If people have been repeating for 50 years that lisp lists
> are implemented with cons, car and cdr...

Because I can understand there were some memory constraints 50 years
ago that force lisp lists to be as small as possible. But I would have
thought lisp lists (or (e)lisp) to evolve as computer memories did.