Python cons

An implementation of cons in Python.

Usage and Design

The cons package attempts to emulate the semantics of Lisp/Scheme's cons as closely as possible while incorporating all the built-in Python sequence types:

>>> from cons import cons, car, cdr
>>> cons(1, [])
[1]

>>> cons(1, ())
(1,)

>>> cons(1, [2, 3])
[1, 2, 3]

>>> cons(1, "a string")
ConsPair(1 'a string')

According to cons, None corresponds to the empty built-in list:

>>> cons(1, None)
[1]

The cons package follows Scheme-like semantics for empty sequences:

>>> car([])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ConsError: Not a cons pair

>>> cdr([])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ConsError: Not a cons pair

Features

• Support for the standard Python ordered collection types: i.e. list, tuple, Iterator, OrderedDict.

>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> cons(('a', 1), OrderedDict())
OrderedDict([('a', 1)])

• Existing cons behavior is easy to change and new collections are straightforward to add through multipledispatch.
• Built-in support for unification.

>>> from unification import unify, reify, var
>>> unify([1, 2], cons(var('car'), var('cdr')), {})
{~car: 1, ~cdr: [2]}

>>> reify(cons(1, var('cdr')), {var('cdr'): [2, 3]})
[1, 2, 3]

>>> reify(cons(1, var('cdr')), {var('cdr'): None})
[1]

Installation

pip install cons