Towards a Better Understanding of CAR, CDR, CADR and the Others
This work addresses a historical curiosity in computer science, providing insight into early programming terminology, but it is incremental as it clarifies existing knowledge without introducing new methods or data.
The paper investigates the origins and naming of CAR, CDR, and their compound forms like CADR in the IBM 704 architecture, concluding that the names, while not entirely logical, facilitate compounding and can be interpreted as access programs.
This paper describes the IBM 704 architecture and the genesis of the names for CAR, and CDR, which, as it turns out, probably don't quite make sense. The paper suggests that this may not be all bad, as the names lend themselves to compounding. Indeed that the compound function names , such as CADR, or even CADADR, etc. may be read as little access programs.