[erlang-questions] lists:concat with non-string sublists

[James Aimonetti]

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On 05/23/2012 01:37 AM, Ladislav Lenart wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> On 22.5.2012 20:46, James Aimonetti wrote:
>>>> [snip] So, according to the docs, I would expect:
>>>> 
>>>>> lists:concat([[{foo, 123}], [{bar, 234}]]).
>>>> 
>>>> to fail. It doesn't, and returns [{foo, 123}, {bar,234}].
>>>> Reading the implementation of concat/1 its easy to see why
>>>> this works.
>>>> 
>>> [snip]
>>> 
>>> Typical example of this is something like lists:append/2:
>>> 
>>> -spec append(list(), list()) -> list(). % or something more 
>>> involved
>>> 
>>> but the implementation may allow for calls of the form:
>>> 
>>> Eshell V5.9.2  (abort with ^G) 1> lists:append([], 3.14). 3.14
>>> 
>>> but you probably would not want to change its spec to allow
>>> term() for its second argument and return, would you?
>> 
>> Indeed not, wrt to the lists:append/2 example. I guess the safer 
>> course of action, in my case, is to implement my own concat/1 for
>> my list of lists of tuples, to ensure that lists:concat/1 doesn't
>> change down the road to enforce the spec more strictly?
> 
> What about lists:append/1? That should be suitable for your use
> case, or am I missing something?
> 
> 
> Ladislav Lenart
> 
> 
> 

lists:append/1 is certainly more suitable. I was running Dialyzer on
code I hadn't written and was surprised that lists:concat/1 didn't
enforce the spec more tightly and error on the input I gave it.


- -- 
James Aimonetti
Distributed Systems Engineer / DJ MC_

2600hz | http://2600hz.com
sip:james@REDACTED
tel: 415.886.7905
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