car and cdr, and is used to construct lists.
For example, to construct the list (apples oranges pears bananas) from the three-element list (oranges pears bananas), you would use cons as follows:
(cons 'apples '(oranges pears bananas))The function
cons always adds the new element to the beginning of the list. It must always have a list to start with, and fortunately, this can be the empty list. As an example, to construct the list (peaches), you would code:
(cons 'peaches ())