Subject: Re: Short question: the letter n From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/04/26 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3165754543082761@naggum.no> * srs <srs43@my-deja.com> | A lot of the destructive operations in lisp start with the letter "n". | (e.g. nreverse nsubstitute). What does this letter stand for? non-consing. "consing" here is the basic allocation operation. don't think of these operations as "destructive". think of them as returning a value just like their consing counter-parts, except that you know that you won't use the argument you gave them again, then don't ever use the argument you gave them, no matter how much some people tell you that you _could_. true "destructive" operations include rplaca and rplacd. #:Erik