RE: [External] : Determine whether a list is an alist

[Drew Adams]

> There's a consp function that you can use to check
> if entry is cons or not.

And there's its complement, `atom'.
An old-school name, but it says what
it means: "atomic", i.e., indivisible.

But it's only atomic wrt lists.  Lisp
now has "atomic" objects that are not
lists but that are in some way divisible.
E.g., a string and a vector are `atom'ic
(they're not `consp'), but you can get
inside them.

So yeah, nowadays `consp' says better
what it means than `atom' does.  You
have to read `atom' as just not-a-cons.