Cons—a C99 library for simple Lisp-like singly-linked lists

Inspired by Lisp, "Cons" is a lightweight C99 library that provides a clean, efficient implementation of singly-linked lists. Designed for simplicity and performance, it offers essential operations for managing dynamic collections of data in C programs without the overhead of other dependencies.

Features

• Singly-Linked Lists
  • Core data structure for efficient list management
• Hierarchical Nodes
  • Support for nested lists, allowing for complex data structures
• Simple API
  • Intuitive Lisp-like functions for list operations like cons, cons_car, and cons_cdr
• Dynamic Collections
  • Functions for constructing and modifying lists from caller-managed nodes; allocation and deallocation remain the caller's responsibility
• Documentation
  • Comprehensive API documentation generated with Doxygen

Usage

To use the Cons library, include the header file and link against the compiled library in your C project. The API provides functions for constructing and manipulating lists, as well as traversing and modifying hierarchical node structures.

#include "cons.h"
 
int main(void) {
    struct cons cell1 = CONS((void *)1, CONS_NIL);
    struct cons cell2 = CONS((void *)2, CONS_NIL);
    struct cons *head = CONS_NIL;
 
    cons(&head, &cell1);
    cons(&head, &cell2);
 
    return 0;
}

What does this code do? It constructs two cons cells, cell1 and cell2, with values 1 and 2 respectively. It then constructs a list by prepending these cells to the head pointer, resulting in a list that contains both cells.