Cons
lastmod 2025-12-10created 2020-10-281 edits
A traditional name handed down from LISP; it is called cons because it constructs (construction) a single unit by binding two cells together.
In LISP, cons is used to build and work with many data structures, not only lists but also trees and more.
In more formalized functional languages such as Haskell, the generality of the cons cell in LISP has been lost, but the name is still often used to refer to operators such as : or ::.