Each term Term in the list is called an element. The number of elements is said to be the length of the list.

    Example:

    A list where the tail is a list is sometimes called a proper list. It is allowed to have a list where the tail is not a list, for example, [a|b]. However, this type of list is of little practical use.

    1. 1> L1 = [a,2,{c,4}].
    2. [a,2,{c,4}]
    3. 2> [H|T] = L1.
    4. [a,2,{c,4}]
    5. a
    6. 4> T.
    7. [2,{c,4}]
    8. 5> L2 = [d|T].
    9. 6> length(L1).
    10. 3
    11. 7> length([]).
    12. 0

    A collection of list processing functions can be found in the manual page in STDLIB.