The Joy of Clojure

Chapter 5. Composite data types

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.

Alan Perlis

 

This chapter covers

• Persistence, sequences, and complexity
• Vectors: creating and using them in all their varieties
• Lists: Clojure’s code form data structure
• How to use persistent queues
• Persistent sets
• Thinking in maps
• Putting it all together: finding the position of items in a sequence

 

Clojure provides a rich set of composite data types and we’ll cover them all: vectors, lists, queues, sets, and maps. In this chapter, we’ll dig into the strengths and weaknesses of each. We’ll spend more time on vectors and maps than on the other types, because those two are used in a wider variety of ...