Land of Lisp

The Conditionals: if and Beyond

Now that you understand how Lisp handles true and false, let’s look at if and some of the other conditional commands.

One Thing at a Time with if

The if command can be used to make different things happen when things are true (such as when 1 + 2 = 3) or false (such as when 1 + 2 = 4).

> (if (= (+ 1 2) 3)
      'yup
      'nope)

YUP

> (if (= (+ 1 2) 4)
      'yup
      'nope)

NOPE

The if command can also be used to check whether a list is empty:

> (if '(1)
      'the-list-has-stuff-in-it
      'the-list-is-empty)

THE-LIST-HAS-STUFF-IN-IT

> (if '()
      'the-list-has-stuff-in-it
      'the-list-is-empty)

THE-LIST-IS-EMPTY

So far, the only way to branch on a condition that we’ve looked at has been the if command:

> (if (oddp 5)
      'odd-number
      'even-number)

ODD-NUMBER

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