Elixir
Elixir Basics - 2. Lists
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Lists in Elixir are collections of values and can include multiple types.
iex(1)> [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
Lists are NOT arrays
It may be tempting to think that lists in Elixir are similar to arrays in other languages, but they are nothing like arrays. Lists in Elixir are implemented as "linked lists" because they are linked data structures. What exactly does this mean?
Typically with arrays you can access elements within that array via its index. Let's see what happens when we try this with a list in Elxir.
iex(3)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(4)> list[1]
** (ArgumentError) the Access calls for keywords expect the key to be an atom, got: 1
(elixir 1.12.3) lib/access.ex:310: Access.get/3
The reason this does not work is because of the underlying "link" or connection/relationship each element within the list has to one another. In a list, each element contains a pointer to the next element in the list. Elements within Lists are not typically stored right next to each other in memory, like they are in arrays.
This has some performance implications.
If we want to determine the length of a list, we have to traverse through each and every element to find out how many there are in the list, because they are linked together. After the first element in list, we need to see where its pointer is pointing to, then find that elements pointer to the next element and so on. This means the longer the list is, the more expensive the operation is to calculate its length.
Compare this with arrays.
When asking for the length of an array, it simply tells you its length as the length of an array is a known attribute, which means no calculation is necessary.
Head & Tail
Lists in Elixir have both a head and tail. The head is the first element within the list and the tail is all of the remaining elements within the list.
We can use the hd() function to grab the head of a list.
iex(5)> hd([5.0, "Hello, World", :false])
5.0
Remeber, parantheses are optional in Elixir, so you can also do this.
iex(6)> hd [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
5.0
Similarly, we can get the tail of the list using the tl() function.
iex(7)> tl [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
["Hello, World", false]
Ok, so why is this important? Understanding the head & tail of lists is helpful for when you need to add or remove elements from a list as some of these operations are more expensive than others. To be clear, when I say more expensive, I mean it will require more computer resources and time to perform the operation.
Prepend vs Append
Often times you will need to add a new element to an already existing list. Prepending the element onto a list, meaning the element is added to the beginning of the list is a cheap operation. The reason why it is cheap, is because all that is required is knowing where the first element of the list is and adding a new element in front of it.
This is not the case then appending to a list. When you need to add an element to the end of a list, the entire list has to be traversed to find the last element first, and then the new element can be added after it. Since all of the elements in a list are linked together this is the only way to find out where the last element is.
Prepend
You can prepend a new element onto a list like so:
iex(9)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(10)> [14 | list]
[14, 5.0, "Hello, World", false]
The way this works, is that we are creating a new list using brackets [] and placing new element 14 folowed by a pipe | and then the list we want to append onto.
[14 | list] basically says create a new list where 14 is the first element and the remaning elements are whatever is stored inside of the list variable.
Remember, that data structures in Elixir are immutable so this operation has not changed our list variable. Rather what is returned is an entirely new list, the original list variable has not been modified.
iex(9)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(10)> [14 | list]
[14, 5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(11)> list
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
Append
You can append a new element onto a list using the ++ operator.
iex(1)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(2)> list ++ [14]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false, 14]
List Subtraction
You can remove elements from a list using the -- operator.
iex(1)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
iex(3)> list -- [false]
[5.0, "Hello, World"]
List subtraction also uses "strict comparison" to match the values.
iex(5)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(6)> list -- [5]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
This does not work, because we are trying to subtract the interger 5 where our list has a float of 5.0.
iex(7)> list = [5.0, "Hello, World", :false]
[5.0, "Hello, World", false]
iex(8)> list -- [5.0]
["Hello, World", false]
Charlists
One thing to keep in mind regarding lists, is that Elixir is built ontop of Erlang. Erlang has something known as a Charlist which to use looks like a list of integers, but Erlang sees those numbers are representations of ASCII characters.
iex(13)> [72, 101, 108, 108, 111, 44, 32, 87, 111, 114, 108, 100]
'Hello, World'
If we inspect 'hello' you will see that Erlang sees it as a Charlist.
iex(12)> i 'Hello, World'
Term
'Hello, World'
Data type
List
Description
This is a list of integers that is printed as a sequence of characters
delimited by single quotes because all the integers in it represent printable
ASCII characters. Conventionally, a list of Unicode code points is known as a
charlist and a list of ASCII characters is a subset of it.
Raw representation
[72, 101, 108, 108, 111, 44, 32, 87, 111, 114, 108, 100]
Reference modules
List
Implemented protocols
Collectable, Enumerable, IEx.Info, Inspect, List.Chars, String.Chars
Charlists vs Strings
It is important to remember that single quotes '' and double quotes "" are not the same thing in Elixir. Single quotes are charlists while double quotes are strings.
iex(14)> 'Hello, World' == "Hello, World"
false