6.4 Vectors

A vector is a general-purpose array whose elements can be any Lisp objects. (By contrast, the elements of a string can only be characters. See Strings and Characters.) Vectors are used in Emacs for many purposes: as key sequences (see Key Sequences), as symbol-lookup tables (see Creating Symbols), as part of the representation of a byte-compiled function (see Byte Compilation), and more.

Like other arrays, vectors use zero-origin indexing: the first element has index 0.

Vectors are printed with square brackets surrounding the elements. Thus, a vector whose elements are the symbols a, b and a is printed as [a b a]. You can write vectors in the same way in Lisp input.

A vector, like a string or a number, is considered a constant for evaluation: the result of evaluating it is the same vector. This does not evaluate or even examine the elements of the vector. See Self-Evaluating Forms. Vectors written with square brackets should not be modified via aset or other destructive operations. See Mutability.

Here are examples illustrating these principles:

(setq avector [1 two '(three) "four" [five]])
     ⇒ [1 two '(three) "four" [five]]
(eval avector)
     ⇒ [1 two '(three) "four" [five]]
(eq avector (eval avector))
     ⇒ t