lisp newbie help

if i set the value of a symbol to a function, how do i call it with that symbol?

(setq a #'append)
(a ... ) <--how do i do this?

thanks

>>1
(a ...)

>>2
error :function A is not defined

>>2

ja that only works in the scheme like ones, where functions and variables reside in the same namespace.

Ya gata do it like:

(funcall a ...)

You call a function that takes a variable (which is a function)

You could also do (apply a (...)), which can be more convenient at times.

Some people hate this. Some like variables being in a different name space than functions so you can do:

(defun list (list)
 (if (null? list)
   1
   (list (cdr list))))

I personally perfer being able to call variables that happen to be functions using the same syntax for calling functions.

>>1
Tell us what language you are using.
Some have a separate namespace for functions, while others dont.

>>4
thanks bro

(defun list (list)
 (if (null? list)
   1
   (list (cdr list))))

Who the fuck would do that? That's not a reason for functions and variables to be divided.

Here's how to solve your problem:

[1]> (exit)
Bye.
$ guile
guile> (define a append)
guile> (define x '(1 2 3))
guile> (a x x)
(1 2 3 1 2 3)

>>7
indeed

>>7
Whoa, for some reason I always thought Guile was a CL implementation, not Scheme.

(lisp (is (for (faggots))))

What was the real reason for an arbitrary number of namespaces in those lisps anyway? It looks to be related to pre-von Neumann concerns. The idea of having the privilege of a list variable inside a list function looks stupid. You end up with N setters and N ways to get things... Even C doesn't do this (though C does have separate namespaces for things like structs, but those don't form valid operations much with functions and variables except through things like sizeof).

>>11
It's just a historical thing.

>>11
Makes writing macros easier, also you don't have to rename your variables to not match with functions (I tend to use variables named like string, list all the time).

The full reason is explained here:
http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Technical-Issues.html

>>11
Hygienic macros didn't exist back then, using multiple namespaces helped avoiding captures.

>>12-14
aah ありがとう