Are there ruby equivalents to car, cdr, and cons?

Question

Are there ruby equivalents to the lisp car, cdr, and cons functions? For those unfamiliar with lisp, here\'s what I want from ruby:

[1,2,3].car   => 1
[1,2,3]         


        

Answer 1

Semi-seriously, if you want CONS, CAR, and CDR in Ruby, you could do worse than

def cons(x,y)
   return lambda {|m| m.call(x,y)}
end

def car(z)
  z.call(lambda {|p,q| p})
end

def cdr(z)
  z.call(lambda {|p,q| q})
end

And then you can define your list procedures,

def interval(low, high)
  if (low > high)
    return nil
  else
    return cons(low, interval(low + 1, high))
  end
end

def map(f, l)
  if (l == nil)
    return nil
  else
    cons(f.call(car(l)), map(f, cdr(l)))
  end
end

def filter(p, l)
  if (l == nil)
    return nil
  elsif (p.call(car(l)))
    return cons(car(l), filter(p, cdr(l)))
  else
    return filter(p, cdr(l))
  end
end

def reduce(f, f0, l)
  if (l == nil)
    return f0
  else
    return f.call(car(l), reduce(f, f0, cdr(l)))
  end
end

And then you might get the sum of the odd squares in the range 1 to 10:

reduce(lambda {|x, y| x + y},
       0,
       filter(lambda {|x| x % 2 == 1},
              map(lambda {|x| x * x},
                  interval(1, 10))))
=> 165