Common LISP Hints: Funcall, Apply, and Mapcar

## 20. Funcall, Apply, and Mapcar

Earlier I promised to give some functions which take functions as arguments. Here they are:

> `

>     > (funcall #'+ 3 4)
>     7
>     > (apply #'+ 3 4 '(3 4))
>     14
>     > (mapcar #'not '(t nil t nil t nil))
>     (NIL T NIL T NIL T)

> `

`Funcall` calls its first argument on its remaining arguments.

`Apply` is just like `funcall`, except that its final argument should be a list; the elements of that list are treated as if they were additional arguments to a `funcall`.

The first argument to `mapcar` must be a function of one argument; `mapcar` applies this function to each element of a list and collects the results in another list.

`Funcall` and `apply` are chiefly useful when their first argument is a variable. For instance, a search engine could take a heuristic function as a parameter and use `funcall` or `apply` to call that function on a state description. The sorting functions described later use `funcall` to call their comparison functions.

`Mapcar`, along with nameless functions (see below), can replace many loops.