Question

I have been working on the following function flatten and so far have it working for just lists. I was wondering if someone could provide me with some insight on how to get it work with pairs? For example (flatten ‘(a .a)) would return (a a). Thanks.

(define (flatten list)
   (cond ((null? list) null)
         ((list? (car list)) (append (flatten (car list)) (flatten (cdr list))))
         (else
          (cons (car list) (flatten (cdr list))))))

Answer 1

Here’s one option:

(define (flatten x)
  (cond ((null? x) '())
        ((pair? x) (append (flatten (car x)) (flatten (cdr x))))
        (else (list x))))