6. Sequences, Arrays, and Vectors

Recall that the sequence type is the union of two other Lisp types: lists and arrays. In other words, any list is a sequence, and any array is a sequence. The common property that all sequences have is that each is an ordered collection of elements.

An array is a single primitive object that has a slot for each of its elements. All the elements are accessible in constant time, but the length of an existing array cannot be changed. Strings, vectors, char-tables and bool-vectors are the four types of arrays.

A list is a sequence of elements, but it is not a single primitive object; it is made of cons cells, one cell per element. Finding the nth element requires looking through n cons cells, so elements farther from the beginning of the list take longer to access. But it is possible to add elements to the list, or remove elements.

The following diagram shows the relationship between these types:

_____________________________________________ | | | Sequence | | ______ ________________________________ | | | | | | | | | List | | Array | | | | | | ________ ________ | | | |______| | | | | | | | | | | Vector | | String | | | | | |________| |________| | | | | ____________ _____________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | Char-table | | Bool-vector | | | | | |____________| |_____________| | | | |________________________________| | |_____________________________________________|

The elements of vectors and lists may be any Lisp objects. The elements of strings are all characters.

6.1 Sequences		Functions that accept any kind of sequence.
6.2 Arrays		Characteristics of arrays in Emacs Lisp.
6.3 Functions that Operate on Arrays		Functions specifically for arrays.
6.4 Vectors		Special characteristics of Emacs Lisp vectors.
6.5 Functions for Vectors		Functions specifically for vectors.
6.6 Char-Tables		How to work with char-tables.
6.7 Bool-vectors		How to work with bool-vectors.