In computer programming, append
is the operation for concatenating linked lists or arrays in some high-level programming languages.
Append
originates in the programming language Lisp. The append
procedure takes zero or more (linked) lists as arguments, and returns the concatenation of these lists.
(append '(1 2 3) '(a b) '() '(6))
;Output: (1 2 3 a b 6)
Since the append
procedure must completely copy all of its arguments except the last, both its time and space complexity are O(n) for a list of elements. It may thus be a source of inefficiency if used injudiciously in code.
The nconc
procedure (called append!
in Scheme) performs the same function as append
, but destructively: it alters the cdr of each argument (save the last), pointing it to the next list.
Append
can easily be defined recursively in terms of cons
. The following is a simple implementation in Scheme, for two arguments only:
(define append
(lambda (ls1 ls2)
(if (null? ls1)
ls2
(cons (car ls1) (append (cdr ls1) ls2)))))
Append can also be implemented using fold-right:
(define append
(lambda (a b)
(fold-right cons b a)))
Following Lisp, other high-level programming languages which feature linked lists as primitive data structures have adopted an append
. To append lists, as an operator, Haskell uses ++
, OCaml uses @
.
Other languages use the +
or ++
symbols to nondestructively concatenate a string, list, or array.
The logic programming language Prolog features a built-in append
predicate, which can be implemented as follows:
append(,Ys,Ys).
append(,Ys,) :-
append(Xs,Ys,Zs).
This predicate can be used for appending, but also for picking lists apart. Calling
?- append(L,R,).
yields the solutions:
L = , R = ; L = , R = ; L = , R = ; L = , R =
In Miranda, this right-fold, from Hughes (1989:5-6), has the same semantics (by example) as the Scheme implementation above, for two arguments.
append a b = reduce cons b a
Where reduce is Miranda's name for fold, and cons constructs a list from two values or lists.
For example,
append = reduce cons = (reduce cons ) (cons 1 (cons 2 nil)) = cons 1 (cons 2 [3,4])) (replacing cons by cons and nil by [3,4]) = [1,2,3,4]
In Haskell, this right-fold has the same effect as the Scheme implementation above:
append :: [a] -> [a] -> [a]
append xs ys = foldr (:) ys xs
This is essentially a reimplementation of Haskell's ++
operator.
In Perl, the push function is equivalent to the append method, and can be used in the following way.
my @list;
push @list, 1;
push @list, 2, 3;
The end result is a list containing [1, 2, 3]
The unshift function appends to the front of a list, rather than the end
my @list;
unshift @list, 1;
unshift @list, 2, 3;
The end result is a list containing [2, 3, 1]
When opening a file, use the ">>" mode to append rather than over write.
open(my $fh, '>>', "/some/file.txt");
print $fh "Some new text\n";
close $fh;
Note that when opening and closing file handles, one should always check the return value.
In Python, use the list method "extend" or the infix operators + and += to append lists.
l = [1, 2]
l.extend([3, 4, 5])
print l + [6, 7]
After executing this code, l is a list containing [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], while the output generated is the list [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Do not confuse with the list method "append", which adds a single element to a list:
l = [1, 2]
l.append(3)
Here, the result is a list containing [1, 2, 3].
In Bash the append redirect is the usage of ">>" for adding a stream to something, like in the following series of shell commands:
echo Hello world! >text; echo Goodbye world! >>text; cat text
The stream "Goodbye world!" is added to the text file written in the first command. The ";" implies the execution of the given commands in order, not simultaneously. So, the final content of the text file is:
Hello world!
Goodbye world!
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