'''lolcat''' is an [Additional list functions%|%additional list function] which [aspect] uses almost every day. Once you come to love it, you will too! It's a portmanteau of [lmap], [{*}] and [concat]: ====== proc lolcat args { concat {*}[uplevel 1 lmap $args] } ====== It's useful in cases where you want to [lmap], but the body might need to yield multiple results for a single iteration. Here's a simple example: ====== % lolcat {x y} {1 2 3 4} {list $y $x} 2 1 4 3 % lolcat x {1 2 3 4} {if {$x%2} {list $x $x} else {list $x}} 1 1 2 3 3 4 ====== To understand how it works, remember that [concat] concatenates lists, and `concat {*}$ls` receives the elements of `$ls` as arguments. Thus, `concat {*}$ls` will flatten (one level of) a list: ====== % concat {*}{{1 2} {3 4 5} {6 {7 8}} 9} 1 2 3 4 5 6 {7 8} 9 # equivalently: % concat {1 2} {3 4 5} {6 {7 8}} 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 {7 8} 9 ====== One neat extension on lolcat is '''dictify''': ====== proc dictify {cmdPrefix ls} { lolcat x $ls { list $x [uplevel 1 $cmdPrefix [list $x]] } } ====== This allows you to make a [dict]ionary whose keys are a list, and values are the result of evaluating a command on each element. ====== % dictify {expr 2**} {1 2 3 4 5} 1 2 2 4 3 8 4 16 5 32 ====== Or more elaborately: ====== % proc pdict {d} {array set {} $d; parray {}} % pdict [dictify {tcl::pkgconfig get} [tcl::pkgconfig list]] debug = 0 threaded = 1 profiled = 0 64bit = 0 optimized = 1 mem_debug = 0 compile_debug = 0 compile_stats = 0 libdir,runtime = /home/tcl/lib bindir,runtime = /home/tcl/bin scriptdir,runtime = /home/tcl/lib/tcl8.6 includedir,runtime = /home/tcl/include docdir,runtime = /home/tcl/man libdir,install = /home/tcl/lib bindir,install = /home/tcl/bin scriptdir,install = /home/tcl/lib/tcl8.6 includedir,install = /home/tcl/include docdir,install = /home/tcl/man ====== The name comes courtesy [hypnotoad] - previously I called this procedure '''lconcat''', which is obviously a terrible name, and I only stuck with for lack of a better alternative. It took the toad's genius to find this proc's correct name, which just goes to show: give a dog a bad name, and it will stick ... but a cat can change its stripes! **Similar Works** [AMG]: [[lolcat]] resembles [[[lcomp]]]: ====== % lolcat {a b} {1 2 3 4} {list $b $a} % lolcat a {1 3} b {2 4} {list $b $a} % lcomp {$b} {$a} for {a b} in {1 2 3 4} % lcomp {$b} {$a} for a in {1 3} and b in {2 4} ====== All return `2 1 4 3`. The differences are: %|[[lolcat]] |[[lcomp]] |% &|Result generator is last argument|Result generator is first argument(s) |& &|Result generator is one argument |Result generator is one or more argument(s)|& &|Result generator is Tcl script |Result generator is [expr] expressions |& &|No noise words |Supports numerous tokens such as '''for''' |& While I'm on the subject, [Brush] offers (will offer) capability very similar to [[lcomp]], though the language-level syntax is different: ====== % collect b a for (&a &b) in (1 2 3 4) % collect b a for &a in (1 3) and &b in (2 4) ====== **See Also** [fptools]: contains a proc `lmultimap` which offers a different way to have multiple results from mapping over a single list [map in functional programming]: another small but powerful variation on [lmap] <> Command