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Land of Lisp
book

Land of Lisp

by Conrad Barski M.D.
November 2010
Intermediate to advanced
504 pages
12h 45m
English
No Starch Press
Content preview from Land of Lisp

Comparing Stuff: eq, equal, and More

There’s a lot of beautiful symmetry in Lisp. One part of Lisp that isn’t so beautiful, though, involves the commands for comparing things.

If you want to compare two values in Lisp to find out if they are “the same,” you will find a bewildering assortment of different functions that purport to accomplish this. Of these, equal, eql, eq, =, string-equal, and equalp are the most commonly used. A Lisper must understand the subtleties of these functions intimately in order to know how to compare values correctly.

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Before we start dissecting this madness, let me give you Conrad’s Rule of Thumb for Comparing Stuff. Follow ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781593272814Errata Page