clojure definition of list in source code

Question

I was browsing the clojure source code this morning, and near the top of clojure/core.clj I found this:

(def
    ^{:arglists '([& items])
      :doc "Creates a new list containing the items."
      :added "1.0"}
    list (. clojure.lang.PersistentList creator))

The thing that looks odd to me is the symbol creator. It doesn't appear anywhere in the file above it. Why is that not a problem?

Lee · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-07 14:10:27Z

6

The dot special form is used for java interop. Since clojure.lang.PersistentList is a class name symbol,

(. clojure.lang.PersistentList creator)

is an access of the static creator field.

https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/clojure-1.8.0/src/jvm/clojure/lang/PersistentList.java#L66

edited Jun 7, 2017 at 14:10

answered Jun 7, 2017 at 14:05

Lee

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2 Comments

Kevin Over a year ago

Im used to seeing clojure.lang.PersistentList/creator for static access, so that threw me off. Thanks.

amalloy Over a year ago

This function was written before the Foo/bar syntax was added to the language.

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