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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T13:05:24+00:00

I’m just starting out with LISP, as in, just opened the book, I’m two

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I’m just starting out with LISP, as in, just opened the book, I’m two pages into it. I’m trying to understand what is and what is not an acceptable fn call. Every time I try to execute 

(1 2 3 4)

I get an illegal fn call error
same goes for

(cdr (1 2 3 4))
(first (1 2 3 4))
(a b c d)

Are CL programs unable to return lists? How would I go about using these functions or printing a list? I’m using the SLIME implementation if it matters. LISP is very different than anything I’ve worked with before and I want to be sure I’m getting it conceptually.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You need to quote lists if you are using them as constants. Otherwise, the system will try to call the function 1 on the arguments 2 3 4, which will not work (note that function calls have the same syntax as lists). Your examples should be:

    '(1 2 3 4)
(cdr '(1 2 3 4))
(first '(1 2 3 4))
'(a b c d)
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