The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005)

Re:The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005) by DonHopkins on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @11:14AM (#16009197)

My favorite pair of silly LISP function names derived from CAR and CDR is RPLACA and RPLACD.

Then of course there's the whole family of derived function names CAAR, CADR, CDAR, CADADR, CADDDDR, CAAAAR, etc.

I wonder if that's what inspired Oliver Steele's "The Aargh Page":

http://osteele.com/words/aargh

http://blog.osteele.com/2005/12/aargh/

Even sillier is LOGO's alternative to CAR and CDR: FIRST and BUTFIRST. As in "BUTFIRST recursion" (giggle).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MicroWorlds_Logo_comma...

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Re:The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005) by bitwize on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @12:17PM (#16009515)

> Even sillier is LOGO's alternative to CAR and CDR: FIRST and BUTFIRST. As in "BUTFIRST recursion" (giggle).

Frosh-level CS classes may introduce linked lists as classes in some OO programming language -- often with the accessor methods getHead() and getTail(). Huh huh huh huh huh.

You'd think CAR and CDR, being abstruse acronyms steeped in technical language, would be immune from this sort of unfortunate double entendre, but no: my AI class professor had an Eastern European accent and pronounced CDR like "cooter".

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