5.4.1 Introduction to Lists

Lists are the basic building block for Maxima and Lisp. All data types other than arrays, hashed arrays and numbers are represented as Lisp lists, These Lisp lists have the form

((MPLUS) $A 2)

to indicate an expression a+2. At Maxima level one would see the infix notation a+2. Maxima also has lists which are printed as

[1, 2, 7, x+y]

for a list with 4 elements. Internally this corresponds to a Lisp list of the form

((MLIST) 1 2 7 ((MPLUS) $X $Y))

The flag which denotes the type field of the Maxima expression is a list itself, since after it has been through the simplifier the list would become

((MLIST SIMP) 1 2 7 ((MPLUS SIMP) $X $Y))