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Vee Satayamas
Vee Satayamas

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I have been told to avoid linked lists.

#linkedlist

I've been told to avoid linked lists because their elements are scattered everywhere, which can be true in some cases. However, I wonder what happens in loops, which I use frequently. I tried to inspect memory addresses of list elements of these two programs run on SBCL.

CL-USER> (setq *a-list* (let ((a nil)) (push 10 a) (push 20 a) (push 30 a) a))
(30 20 10)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address *a-list*)
69517814583 (37 bits, #x102F95AB37)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address (cdr *a-list*))
69517814567 (37 bits, #x102F95AB27)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address (cddr *a-list*))
69517814551 (37 bits, #x102F95AB17)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address (cddr *a-list*))
69517814551 (37 bits, #x102F95AB17)
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CL-USER> (setq *a-list* (let ((a nil))
              (push 10 a)
              (push 20 a)
              (push 30 a) 
              a))
(30 20 10)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address *a-list*)
69518319943 (37 bits, #x102F9D6147)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address (cdr *a-list*))
69518319927 (37 bits, #x102F9D6137)
CL-USER> (sb-kernel:get-lisp-obj-address (cddr *a-list*))
69518319911 (37 bits, #x102F9D6127)
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In both programs, the list elements are not scattered. So, if scattered list elements were an issue for these simple cases, you probably used the wrong compiler or memory allocator.

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