Association Lists

An association list (or alist) is a list mapping key values to to other values. Each element of the alist is a cons cell, the car of which is the key, the cdr is the value that it associates to. For example an alist could look like,

((fred . 20)
 (bill . 30))

this alist has two keys, fred and bill which both associate to an integer (20 and 30 respectively).

It is possible to make the associated values lists, this looks like,

((fred 20 male)
 (bill 30 male)
 (sue  25 female))

in this alist the symbol fred is associated with the list (20 male).

There are a number of functions which let you interrogate an alist with a given key for its association.

Function: assoc key alist

This function scans the association list alist for the first element whose car is equal to key, this element is then returned. If no match of key is found nil is returned.

(assoc 'two '((one . 1) (two . 2) (three . 3)))
    => (two . 2)

Function: assq key alist

Similar to the function assoc except that the function eq is used to compare elements instead of equal.

It is not usually wise to use assq when the keys of the alist may not be symbols -- eq won't think two objects are equivalent unless they are the same object!

(assq "foo" '(("bar" . 1) ("foo" . 2)))
    => nil
(assoc "foo" '(("bar" . 1) ("foo" . 2)))
    => ("foo" . 2)

Function: rassoc association alist

This function searches through alist until it finds an element whose cdr is equal to association, that element is then returned. nil will be returned if no elements match.

(rassoc 2 '((one . 1) (two . 2) (three . 3)))
    => (two . 2)

Function: rassq association alist

This function is equivalent to rassoc except that it uses eq to make comparisons.

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