Evaluation of Clojure Code

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, a high-level programming language that was designed by John McCarthy and first appeared in 1958. One of the most distinctive features of Lisp and its derivatives, or "dialects," is the use of data structures to write the source code of programs. The unusual number of parentheses in our Clojure programs is a manifestation of this as parentheses are used to create lists.

Here, we will focus on the building blocks of Clojure programs, that is, forms and expressions, and briefly look at how expressions are evaluated.

Note

The terms "expression" and "form" are often used interchangeably; however, according to the Clojure documentation, an expression is a form type: "Every form not handled specially by a special form or macro is considered by the compiler to be an expression, which is evaluated to yield a value."

We have seen how literals are valid syntax and evaluate to themselves...