Atoms

Practicality

Atoms are uncoordinated and synchronous reference types. Their name comes from the atomic nature. The most common way of manipulating them is through swap!.

(def sarah (atom {:name "Sarah" :age 25 :wears-glasses? false}))

(swap! sarah update-in [:age] + 3)

(swap! sarah (comp #(update-in % [:age] inc) #(assoc % :wears-glasses? true)))



Should an atom change during the swap! operation, it will automatically retry the operation. It will keep retrying until it updates undisturbed.

Reset!

reset is a way of changing an atoms value with no regard to what its current value is.

(reset! sarah :y)
:y