A property list (plist for short) is a list of paired elements stored in the property list cell of a symbol. Each of the pairs associates a property name (usually a symbol) with a property or value. Property lists are generally used to record information about a symbol, such as its documentation as a variable, the name of the file where it was defined, or perhaps even the grammatical class of the symbol (representing a word) in a language-understanding system.
Character positions in a string or buffer can also have property lists. See section Text Properties.
The property names and values in a property list can be any Lisp
objects, but the names are usually symbols. Property list functions
compare the property names using eq. Here is an example of a
property list, found on the symbol progn when the compiler is
loaded:
(lisp-indent-function 0 byte-compile byte-compile-progn)
Here lisp-indent-function and byte-compile are property
names, and the other two elements are the corresponding values.
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