The SETF macro is Common Lisp's main assignment operator. It sets its first argument to the result of evaluating its second argument. So in load-db the *db* variable will contain the object read from the file, namely, the list of lists written by save-db. You do need to be careful about one thing—load-db clobbers whatever was in *db* before the call. So if you've added records with add-record or add-cds that haven't been saved with save-db, you'll lose them.
Querying the Database
Now that you have a way to save and reload the database to go along with a convenient user interface for adding new records, you soon may have enough records that you won't want to be dumping out the whole database just to look at what's in it. What you need is a way to query the database. You might like, for instance, to be able to write something like this:
(select :artist "Dixie Chicks")
and get a list of all the records where the artist is the Dixie Chicks. Again, it turns out that the choice of saving the records in a list will pay off.
The function REMOVE-IF-NOT takes a predicate and a list and returns a list containing only the elements of the original list that match the predicate. In other words, it has removed all the elements that don't match the predicate. However, REMOVE-IF-NOT doesn't really remove anything—it creates a new list, leaving the original list untouched. It's like running grep over a file. The predicate argument can be any function that accepts a single argument and returns a boolean value—NIL for false and anything else for true.
For instance, if you wanted to extract all the even elements from a list of numbers, you could use REMOVE-IF-NOT as follows:
CL-USER> (remove-if-not #'evenp '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10))
(2 4 6 8 10)
In this case, the predicate is the function EVENP, which returns true if its argument is an even number. The funny notation #' is shorthand for "Get me the function with the following name." Without the #', Lisp would treat evenp as the name of a variable and look up the value of the variable, not the function.
You can also pass REMOVE-IF-NOT an anonymous function. For instance, if EVENP didn't exist, you could write the previous expression as the following:
CL-USER> (remove-if-not #'(lambda (x) (= 0 (mod x 2))) '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10))
(2 4 6 8 10)
In this case, the predicate is this anonymous function:
(lambda (x) (= 0 (mod x 2)))
which checks that its argument is equal to 0 modulus 2 (in other words, is even). If you wanted to extract only the odd numbers using an anonymous function, you'd write this:
CL-USER> (remove-if-not #'(lambda (x) (= 1 (mod x 2))) '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10))
(1 3 5 7 9)
Note that lambda isn't the name of the function—it's the indicator you're defining an anonymous function.[28] Other than the lack of a name, however, a LAMBDA expression looks a lot like a DEFUN: the word lambda is followed by a parameter list, which is followed by the body of the function.
To select all the Dixie Chicks' albums in the database using REMOVE-IF-NOT, you need a function that returns true when the artist field of a record is "Dixie Chicks". Remember that we chose the plist representation for the database records because the function GETF can extract named fields from a plist. So assuming cd is the name of a variable holding a single database record, you can use the expression (getf cd :artist) to extract the name of the artist. The function EQUAL, when given string arguments, compares them character by character. So (equal (getf cd :artist) "Dixie Chicks") will test whether the artist field of a given CD is equal to "Dixie Chicks". All you need to do is wrap that expression in a LAMBDA form to make an anonymous function and pass it to REMOVE-IF-NOT.
CL-USER> (remove-if-not
#'(lambda (cd) (equal (getf cd :artist) "Dixie Chicks")) *db*)
((:TITLE "Home" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 9 :RIPPED T)
(:TITLE "Fly" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 8 :RIPPED T))
Now suppose you want to wrap that whole expression in a function that takes the name of the artist as an argument. You can write that like this:
(defun select-by-artist (artist)
(remove-if-not
#'(lambda (cd) (equal (getf cd :artist) artist))
*db*))
Note how the anonymous function, which contains code that won't run until it's invoked in REMOVE-IF-NOT, can nonetheless refer to the variable artist. In this case the anonymous function doesn't just save you from having to write a regular function—it lets you write a function that derives part of its meaning—the value of artist—from the context in which it's embedded.
So that's select-by-artist. However, selecting by artist is only one of the kinds of queries you might like to support. You could write several more functions, such as select-by-title, select-by-rating, select-by-title-and-artist, and so on. But they'd all be about the same except for the contents of the anonymous function. You can instead make a more general select function that takes a function as an argument.
(defun select (selector-fn)
(remove-if-not selector-fn *db*))
So what happened to the #'? Well, in this case you don't want REMOVE-IF-NOT to use the function named selector-fn. You want it to use the anonymous function that was passed as an argument to select in the variable selector-fn. Though, the #' comes back in the call to select.
CL-USER> (select #'(lambda (cd) (equal (getf cd :artist) "Dixie Chicks")))
((:TITLE "Home" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 9 :RIPPED T)
(:TITLE "Fly" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 8 :RIPPED T))
But that's really quite gross-looking. Luckily, you can wrap up the creation of the anonymous function.
(defun artist-selector (artist)
#'(lambda (cd) (equal (getf cd :artist) artist)))
This is a function that returns a function and one that references a variable that—it seems—won't exist after artist-selector returns.[29] It may seem odd now, but it actually works just the way you'd want—if you call artist-selector with an argument of "Dixie Chicks", you get an anonymous function that matches CDs whose :artist field is "Dixie Chicks", and if you call it with "Lyle Lovett", you get a different function that will match against an :artist field of "Lyle Lovett". So now you can rewrite the call to select like this:
CL-USER> (select (artist-selector "Dixie Chicks"))
((:TITLE "Home" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 9 :RIPPED T)
(:TITLE "Fly" :ARTIST "Dixie Chicks" :RATING 8 :RIPPED T))
28
The word lambda is used in Lisp because of an early connection to the lambda calculus, a mathematical formalism invented for studying mathematical functions.
29
The technical term for a function that references a variable in its enclosing scope is a closure because the function "closes over" the variable. I'll discuss closures in more detail in Chapter 6.