I was trying to declare a list inside list in Clojure.
Expected behavior: `(`()) => (())
Actual behavior: `(`()) => ((clojure.core/list))
What does that output mean?
Also, I would like to understand how the behavior below is consistent.
`() => ()
`("hi") => ("hi")
`(`()) => ((clojure.core/list))
Unrelated to my question, here's a code snippet which actually returns (()):
(conj `() `())
Basically, don't nest quotes. I'm going to use the basic quote special form here, but the same concepts apply to the more complex syntax quote as well.
When you write this:
'()
;;=> ()
That's exactly the same as writing this:
(quote ())
;;=> ()
So when you write this:
'('())
;;=> ((quote ()))
That's the same as writing this:
(quote ((quote ())))
;;=> ((quote ()))
One thing you can do is just quote the outermost list:
'(())
;;=> (())
Or you can the list function, which is a far more general solution:
(list)
;;=> ()
(list "hi")
;;=> ("hi")
(list (list))
;;=> (())
(list 1 (+ 1 1) 3)
;;=> (1 2 3)
