Functions that are built into the LISP language are called ``primitive functions.'' There are (of course) lots of primitive functions in LISP, including all the math functions you would expect. Here's a list of some of the more common math functions:
+, -, *, /, exp, expt, log, sqrt, sin, cos, tan, max, min.
You should look at the appendix entries for these functions and play with them to learn how they work.
More important to the list-processing identity of LISP are the primitive functions that allow selection from lists and construction of lists. The important constructor functions are cons, list, and append. The two principal selector functions are first and rest.
© Colin Allen & Maneesh Dhagat