cond (AutoLISP)

Serves as the primary conditional function for AutoLISP

Supported Platforms: Windows and Mac OS

Signature

(cond [((test) (result ...)) ...])

test

Type: List

Test condition to be evaluated.

result

Type: List

Arguments that are executed if the test condition is successful.

Return Values

Type: T or nil

The value of the last expression in the sublist. If there is only one expression in the sublist (that is, if result is missing), the value of the test expression is returned. If no arguments are supplied, cond returns nil.

Remarks

The cond function accepts any number of lists as arguments. It evaluates the first item in each list (in the order supplied) until one of these items returns a value other than nil. It then evaluates those expressions that follow the test that succeeded.

Examples

The following example uses cond to perform an absolute value calculation:

(cond 
   ((minusp a) (- a)) 
   (t a)
)

If the variable a is set to the value-10, this returns 10.

As shown, cond can be used as a case type function. It is common to use T as the last (default) test expression. Here's another simple example. Given a user response string in the variable s, this function tests the response and returns 1 if it is Y or y, 0 if it is N or n; otherwise nil.

(cond
   ((= s "Y") 1) 
   ((= s "y") 1) 
   ((= s "N") 0) 
   ((= s "n") 0) 
   (t nil)
)