devdocs/elisp/property-lists.html


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 <h3 class="section">Property Lists</h3>   <p>A <em>property list</em> (<em>plist</em> for short) is a list of paired elements. Each of the pairs associates a property name (usually a symbol) with a property or value. Here is an example of a property list: </p> <div class="example"> <pre class="example">(pine cones numbers (1 2 3) color "blue")
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</div> <p>This property list associates <code>pine</code> with <code>cones</code>, <code>numbers</code> with <code>(1 2 3)</code>, and <code>color</code> with <code>"blue"</code>. The property names and values can be any Lisp objects, but the names are usually symbols (as they are in this example). </p> <p>Property lists are used in several contexts. For instance, the function <code>put-text-property</code> takes an argument which is a property list, specifying text properties and associated values which are to be applied to text in a string or buffer. See <a href="text-properties">Text Properties</a>. </p> <p>Another prominent use of property lists is for storing symbol properties. Every symbol possesses a list of properties, used to record miscellaneous information about the symbol; these properties are stored in the form of a property list. See <a href="symbol-properties">Symbol Properties</a>. </p> <table class="menu" border="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">• <a href="plists-and-alists" accesskey="1">Plists and Alists</a>
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<td align="left" valign="top">Comparison of the advantages of property lists and association lists. </td>
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<td align="left" valign="top">• <a href="plist-access" accesskey="2">Plist Access</a>
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<td align="left" valign="top">Accessing property lists stored elsewhere. </td>
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  <p class="_attribution-p">
    Copyright &copy; 1990-1996, 1998-2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <br>Licensed under the GNU GPL license.<br>
    <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Property-Lists.html" class="_attribution-link">https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Property-Lists.html</a>
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