Enclosures and Sticky Values

In this example, we extract values from a Bag. A Bag is like a list, except that its elements are unordered, and like a set, except that it stores how many of each element it contains. For example, the List (g a t t a c a) contains 1 of g, 3 of a, 2 of t and 1 of c. As a set, it is (g a t c), but the order of elements doesn't matter. As a Bag, it is ((g . 1) (a . 3) (t . 2) (c . 1)). It preserves how many of each element it contains, but like the set, the order doesn't matter.

myElemCounts is an implementation of elemCounts, a function in Emblem's Bag library. It takes a Bag and a list of elements, and returns a list containing how many elements of each type contained in the list are present in the Bag.

myElemCounts calls mapcar, which applies its first argument, a function - here an Enclosure - to each element in its remaining arguments. Here, there is one remaining argument, the list (c a r t).

The enclosure calls the function assoc, whose first argument is a key, and returns the corresponding (key . value) pair in its second argument, or NIL if there is none.

Inputs	Vertex	Outputs
`c ((g . 1) (a . 3) (t . 2) (c . 1))`	`assoc`	`(c . 1)`
`(c . 1)`	`null`	`NIL`
`NIL 0`	`when+`
`NIL (c . 1)`	`unless+`	`(c . 1)`
`(c . 1)`	`cdrOfPair`	`1`

Inputs	Vertex	Outputs
`a ((g . 1) (a . 3) (t . 2) (c . 1))`	`assoc`	`(a . 3)`
`(a . 3)`	`null`	`NIL`
`NIL 0`	`when+`
`NIL (a . 3)`	`unless+`	`(a . 3)`
`(a . 3)`	`cdrOfPair`	`3`

Inputs	Vertex	Outputs
`r ((g . 1) (a . 3) (t . 2) (c . 1))`	`assoc`	`NIL`
`NIL`	`null`	`T`
`T 0`	`when+`	`0`
`T NIL`	`unless+`
	`cdrOfPair`

Inputs	Vertex	Outputs
`t ((g . 1) (a . 3) (t . 2) (c . 1))`	`assoc`	`(t . 2)`
`(t . 2)`	`null`	`NIL`
`NIL 0`	`when+`
`NIL (t . 2)`	`unless+`	`(t . 2)`
`(t . 2)`	`cdrOfPair`	`2`

You might have noticed that although the first input to assoc changes, the second one doesn't. Four different values are supplied to the first input while mapcar is executing,but only one value is supplied to the second input, when myElemCounts is called. To prevent the second input value being consumed along with the first input value c, it has been made sticky, which is why, like constant values, it is shown as black.

assoc is called twice in the sandbox before myElemCounts is called.

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