Brian Downing  <see-signature@lavos.net> wrote:
+---------------
| Coby Beck <cbeck@mercury.bc.ca> wrote:
| > What's this IOTA beast?
| 
| Traditionally, something like:
|   (defun iota (n)
|     (loop for i below n collect n))
+---------------

Yup. It seemed obvious, so I neglected to mention it, sorry.
The version in my personal toolbox only a tiny bit more general
than Coby's, and matches versions I have seen elsewhere [though
there is considerable controversy over just what the "right" args
are for IOTA, though I prefer these, obviously]:

    (defun iota (count &optional (start 0) (step 1))
      (loop repeat count for i from start by step collect i))

It's especially convenient to generate test input data interactively:

    (iota 5)      ==> (0 1 2 3 4)
    (iota 5 7)    ==> (7 8 9 10 11)
    (iota 5 7 3)  ==> (7 10 13 16 19)
    (iota 5 2 -1) ==> (2 1 0 -1 -2)
    (iota 5 1 0)  ==> (1 1 1 1 1)
    (coerce (mapcar #'code-char (iota 10 65)) 'string) ==> "ABCDEFGHIJ"


-Rob

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Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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