A quote is a kind of anonymous stack containing unevaluated instructions, it’s pretty useful because it’s lazy. The quote allows to delay execution in order to evaluate later. The quotes are based on the homoiconicity, it means that it can represent a program (the set of instructions in the quote) like a data (the quote).

To evaluate the quote, we use the unquote function available in the Prelude.

Example:

In the latest version, the ‘unquote’ function is considered like an opcode, so we don’t have to import the ‘seq’ module.

noc> load seq
noc> def square = {dup *}
noc> [2 square]
=> [2 square]
noc> unquote
=> [4]

List

We can construct list with quotes.

Example:

noc> [1 2 3]
=> [[1 2 3]]

We can efficiently pattern match a string in converting her to a quote of chars. Indeed, with the tostr and chars combinators, we can manipulate easily the strings.

There is a Noc module dedicated to lists in the Noc STD.

Source: std/list.noc

[1 2 3] len => [3]

Dict

With nested quotes, we can also construct dictionaries.

Example:

noc> [["A" 1] ["B" 2] ["C" 3]]
=> [[["A" 1] ["B" 2] ["C" 3]]]

There is a Noc module dedicated to dicts in the Noc STD.

Source: std/dict.noc

[["A" 1] ["B" 2] ["C" 3]] keys => [["A" "B" "C"]]