The current variable environment is managed by the E register, which points at a list of lists. Each individual list represents one environment level: the parameters of the current function are in the head of the list, variables that are free in the current function, but bound by a surrounding function, are in other elements of E. The dump, at whose head the D register points, is used as temporary storage for values of the other registers, for example during function calls. It can be likened to the return stack of other machines. The memory organization of the SECD machine is similar to the model used by most functional language interpreters: a number of memory cells, each of which can hold either an atom (a simple value, for example 13), or represent an empty or non-empty list. In the latter case, the cell holds two pointers to other cells, one representing the first element, the other representing the list except for the first element. The two pointers are traditionally named car and cdr respectively—but the more modern terms head and tail are often used instead. The different types of values that a cell can hold are distinguished by a tag. Often different types of atoms (integers, strings, etc.) are distinguished as well. So, a list holding the numbers 1, 2, and 3, usually written as (1 2 3), might be represented as follows: Address Tag Content (value for integers, car & cdr for lists) 9 [ integer | 2 ] 8 [ integer | 3 ] 7 [ list | 8 | 0 ] 6 [ list | 9 | 7 ] ... 2 [ list | 1 | 6 ] 1 [ integer | 1 ] 0 [ nil ] The memory cells 3 to 5 do not belong to our list, the cells of which can be distributed randomly over the memory. Cell 2 is the head of the list, it points to cell 1, which holds the first element's value, and the list containing only 2 and 3 (beginning at cell 6). Cell 6 points at a cell holding 2 and at cell 7, which represents the list containing only 3. It does so by pointing at cell 8 containing the value 3, and pointing at an empty list (nil) as cdr. In the SECD machine, cell 0 always implicitly represents the empty list, so no special