8.2. Coping with Complicated Data

Cons cells are a great tool for representing a wide variety of list-like structures. In fact, most Lisp programmers, when faced with a programming task that is not bound by performance constraints, will rely on them almost exclusively. Because the manipulation and visualization of structures made of cons cells are central to the design of Lisp, these structures are extremely convenient to use and debug.

In fact, even if you do have performance constraints, structures made of cons cells can often be a great choice. A Lisp compiler can often reduce a change to a cons cell down to a single assembly instruction!