Re: Oort: Font-Encoding Problem?

[kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann)]

Marcus Frings <iam-est-hora-surgere@fuckmicrosoft.com> writes:

> Are there any (dis)advantages using add-to-list instead of setq?

That's impossible to answer.  They just do different things.  With
(setq foo '(a b c)) you set the variable foo to that value.  With
(add-to-list 'foo 'a) you add an element to the list foo.

It depends on the circumstances whether you want to delete the old
entries or just add new ones.

That said, I find that I usually just add items to alists because
usually the alists will do a useful job for most cases, so I just
need to modify one case or two.  Also, I then profit from new entries
into the alist in newer versions of the software.  Note that Lisp
traverses alists from the beginning and uses the first matching
item.  And add-to-list adds an item to the beginning.  This means
that even if there is an item in the alist already, the item you add
will take precedence.

Does this make sense?

kai
-- 
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