Lists

Use the appropriate functions when manipulating lists.

For simple access to list data, you can use car, cdr, cadr, etc. to access list elements and segments. For common pattern-matching in function heads, receive, let, etc., use cons to access the head and tail of a list (e.g., (,head . ,tail)).

Additionally, don't forget the lists Erlang module for accessing list elements.

You should avoid using a list as anything besides a container of elements of like type. Avoid using a list as method of passing multiple separate values of different types in and out of function calls. Sometimes it is convenient to use a list as a little ad hoc structure, i.e. "the first element of the list is a foo, and the second is a bar", but this should be used minimally since it gets harder to remember the little convention. You should only use a list that way when destructuring the list of arguments from a function, or creating a list of arguments to which to apply a function.

The proper way to pass around an object comprising several values of heterogeneous types is to use a record created via defrecord.