Whereas a set contains distinct unordered items, the Darwin list data type allows the user to create ordered multisets.
A multiset is a set which allows more than one instance of the same object.
An ordered list is a group of expressions surrounded by square brackets
[
, ]
.
> FirstTry := [1, 1, 2, 3]; FirstTry := [1, 1, 2, 3] > SecondTry := [1, 2, 3]; SecondTry := [1, 2, 3]The two lists are not equivalent since FirstTry has two copies of the number 1 while SecondTry has only a single copy.
> AscendList := [1, 2, 3, 4]; AscendList := [1, 2, 3, 4] > DescendList := [4, 3, 2, 1]; DescendList := [4, 3, 2, 1]Again, AscendList and DescendList are not equal since the order of the elements in the list matters.
Like a set, a list are allowed to be heterogeneous (elements may have different types). We can also include a list inside of a list.
> NestedLists := [1, [2, [3, 4], [5]], []]; NestedLists := [1, [2, [3, 4], [5]], []] > MixedUp := ['hello', [1, 2, 3], [a, b, c], [[], []]]; MixedUp := [hello, [1, 2, 3], [a, b, c], [[], []]]
We could define a list of animals as follows:
> animals := ['chimpanzee', 'gorilla', 'monkey', 'orangutan']; animals := [chimpanzee, gorilla, monkey, orangutan]We can think of the list as a chain with the first element containing the string item 'chimpanzee'. The second element of the chain is 'gorilla' and so forth.
To access the individual elements of animals, we provide a number (or range of numbers) indicating which link(s) in the chain we are interested in.
> animals[1]; # the first link in the chain chimpanzee > animals[2..4]; # the second through fourth links in the # chain [gorilla, monkey, orangutan]