The A-TABLE data-type for LISP systems

This paper describes the A-TABLE Data-Type for LISP-based languages. The A-TABLE is introduced in an attempt to unify different structures such as the PASCAL-Record, SNOBOL-Table AND INTERLISP Funarg-Block.A set of functions is defined to apply A-TABLES to: (1) Creating, accessing and updating Records; (2) Managing associatively indexed tables; (3) Providing context-dependent computations in processes and coroutines; (4) Defining multivalued functions.We show how and why these functions can be efficiently implemented with respect to access, space, garbage-collection and page-faults. We compare the A-TABLE with other facilities - LIST, ARRAY, etc.It is suggested that the A-TABLE should be one of the data-types in LISP-based systems where it can fill the gap between types "LIST" and "ARRAY".