apply - How does one reduce a list of boolean values in Common Lisp?

Question

Given a list of values, I want to reduce the list to T if all the elements are not NIL, NIL if not. This gives me an error:

(apply #'and (get-some-list))

As does this:

(reduce #'and (get-some-list))

This is the best I've come up with:

[11]> (defun my-and (x y) (and x y))
MY-AND

[12]> (reduce #'my-and '(T T T T T))
T

[13]> (reduce #'my-and '(T T T T NIL))
NIL

Why is "#'and" invalid? Is there a more idiomatic way to do this in Common Lisp?

Answer 1

You can use the EVERY function:

(every #'identity '(T T T T T))  ->  T

and

(every #'identity '(T T T T NIL))  ->  NIL

Probably the most efficient way is using LOOP:

(loop for element in '(T T T T nil) always element)  ->  NIL

The advantage is that no function calls over the list elements are needed.

#' is a read macro that expands into FUNCTION during read the expression. So #'and is (FUNCTION AND).

FUNCTION is described here: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/s_fn.htm

FUNCTION takes a function name or a lambda expression and returns the corresponding function object.

AND is defined here: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_and.htm

It says that AND is a macro, not a function. The consequence is that (FUNCTION AND) does not work, since FUNCTION needs a function and not a macro to return the corresponding function object. As sepp2k describes in his answer, you can create a function using LAMBDA and use the macro AND inside that function. Macros cannot be passed as values and later be called via FUNCALL or APPLY. This works only with functions.

This solution is written as

(reduce (lambda (x y) (and x y)) (get-some-list))

LAMBDA is a macro that expands (lambda (...) ...) into (function (lambda (...) ...)).

So above is really:

(reduce (function (lambda (x y) (and x y))) (get-some-list))

which can be written as

(reduce #'(lambda (x y) (and x y)) (get-some-list))

FUNCTION is needed because Common Lisp makes a difference between the namespace for values and functions. REDUCE needs to get the function passed as an argument by value. So we need to retrieve the function from the function namespace -- which is the purpose of FUNCTION. Whenever we want to pass a function object, we need to get it from the function namespace.

For example in the case of a local function:

(flet ((my-and (x y) (and x y)))
  #'my-and)

LAMBDA as a convenience macro that expands into (FUNCTION (LAMBDA ...)) has been added during the design of Common Lisp.