Programmer Passport: Elixir

Your Turn

This entire chapter was focused on lists, the algorithms we can build with them, the libraries that work on them, and a quick program.

Let’s review.

Lists Hold Sequential Variable-Length Data

Lists represent sequences of variable lengths, and they usually have elements of the same type. Pattern matching in lists breaks the list into the head and the rest of the elements.

Under the hood, lists are linked lists, and that means each list is made up of its links, sometimes called cons cells. Like links in a chain, these cons cells make list access at the front of the list relatively fast, but they also make access at the end of the list much slower.

Because Elixir is a functional language, our programs don’t iterate over lists. Instead, ...