Problem with access of slots in Lisp (CLOS)

Question

I have a Node class that has an 'element' slot which contains a list with numbers and one letter, for example:

'(1 2 3 b 4 5 6)

(defclass node ()
  ((element :reader get-element
            :writer set-element
            :initform '()
            :initarg :element
            :documentation "The element"))

Part of the program is supposed to take the 'element' slot, swap the letter with one of the numbers and finally create a new Node object with the swapped list as its 'element' slot. I already have a swap function that receives a list and two members of that list and using the rotatef function it swaps them.

To test that the swap function was working I created the following piece of code which stores in a temporary variable the element and swaps the letter 'b' with a number in the list:

(setf root (make-instance 'node))
(set-element '(1 2 3 b 4 5 6 7 8) root)


(setf temp (get-element root))
(swap temp 'b 4)

The problem is that the 'element' slot of the root object is swapped along with temp. Strangely I tried changing the swap function to reverse and it doesn't modify any of the two.

I don't know if there's any way to assign a slot to a variable or a way to prevent the above from happening.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Reverse creates and returns a new list. Rotatef (just as setf, incf and the like) modify a place. You will have to copy-list or copy-tree your element to create a new list that you then modify.