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Mutating State in a Controlled wayλ︎

Mutating state should be used carefully and sparingly in Clojure (and all other programming languages).

atom is a mutable container that can manage any value. The atom ensures that only one call at a time can affect the value it manages. This is part of the software transactions memory system in Clojure.

As the atom is mutable in that the value it manages can be changed, however, this must be done with special commands (swap!, reset!, compare-and-set!, swap-vals!).

Even though the atom is mutable, the values it manages are not. They are normal immutable (unchangeable) Clojure values.

ref is similar to atom and can manage transactions, ensuring that all changes happen or no changes happen.

Project Topics Overview
Mutants assemble atom swap! reset! Using an atom to manage state changes
Undo/Redo atom add-watch Traversing the history of an atom
Poker game atom swap! reset! ref Simple transaction management using atom and ref in a card game, using constraints on an atom

Referencesλ︎