erlang - Reverse a list using recursion -

i'm doing examples book on erlang. here task: write reverse function without using bifs.

here's did:

reverse([h | t]) -> [reverse(t) | [h]]; reverse([]) -> []. 

here's function returns:

(emacs@localhost)3> examples:reverse([1, 2, 3]). [[[[],3],2],1] 

i can't understand how can make return flattened list [3, 2, 1]. possible @ all?

in syntax [h|t], h element , t list (at least proplist), in code [reverse(t) | [h]] creates list first element result of reverse(t), , tail single element list [h].

if want achieve function way, should use syntax proposed fenollp.

if want write efficient code, should avoid make multiple intermediate copy of partial results, , avoid non tail recursive calls (in order limit size of call stack:

reverse(l) -> reverse(l,[]). % use accumulator create tail recursive function  reverse([],r) -> r; reverse([h|t],r) -> reverse(t,[h|r]). % [h|r] can evaluated before recursively calling reverse                                       % called tail recursive function                                       % in addition, construction of [h|t]                                       % not require make copy of t