How would I recurse through nested lists?
For example, given: '((A 1 2) (B 3 4))
How would I add 2 to the second element in each nested sublist?
(defun get-p0 (points)
(loop for x from 0 to
(- (list-length points) 1) do
(+ 2 (cadr (nth x points)))
)
)
I'm not really sure why (get-p0 '((A 1 2) (B 3 4))) returns NIL.
I'd go with something like this:
(loop for (letter x y) in '((A 1 2) (B 3 4))
collect (list letter (+ 2 x) y))
The reason: it's shorter and you don't measure the length of the list in order to iterate over it (why would you do that?)
Since you ask for a recursive solution:
(defun get-p0 (lst &optional (n 0))
(if (null lst)
nil
(let ((elt1 (first lst)) (eltn (cdr lst)))
(if (listp elt1)
(cons (get-p0 elt1) (get-p0 eltn))
(cons (if (= n 1) (+ elt1 2) elt1) (get-p0 eltn (+ n 1)))))))
so
? (get-p0 '((A 1 2) (B 3 4)))
((A 3 2) (B 5 4))
and it recurses further down if necessary:
? (get-p0 '((A 0 2) ((B -4 4) (C 10 4))))
((A 2 2) ((B -2 4) (C 12 4)))
The way you put it, you can consider the problem as a basic recursion pattern: you go through a list using recursion or iteration (mapcar, reduce, etc.; dolist, loop, etc.) and apply a function to its entries. Here is a functional solution:
(defun get-p0 (points)
(mapcar #'add-2 points))
where the auxiliary function can be defined as follows:
(defun add-2 (lst)
"Add 2 to the 2nd item"
(let ((res '()))
(do ((l lst (cdr l))
(i 1 (1+ i)))
((null l) (nreverse res))
(push (if (= 2 i)
(+ 2 (car l))
(car l))
res))))
As written your 'loop' use does not return anything; thus NIL is returned. As is your code is simply iterating over x and computing something; that something isn't stored anywhere.
So, how to get your desired result? Assuming you are willing to modify each point in points, this should work:
(defun get-p0 (points)
(loop for x from 0 to (- (list-length points) 1) do
(let ((point (nth x points)))
(setf (cadr point) (+ 2 (cadr point)))))
points)
