Rawlists

Rawlists are a term used in data processing and programming to describe collections of elements in their unprocessed, or raw, form. They typically represent the initial state of data before validation, normalization, or semantic interpretation has occurred.

In practice, a rawlist preserves order and may contain items of varying types. Depending on the language, rawlists are usually mutable, support indexing and iteration, and allow duplicates. They lack enforced schemas or type constraints, making them flexible but potentially error-prone if not validated later.

Common implementations use standard list or array structures provided by a host language, or buffered streams for incoming data. When dealing with large quantities of raw data, rawlists can be kept as in-memory collections or consumed lazily through iterators or generators to reduce memory usage.

Typical use cases include data ingestion pipelines, log collection, test datasets, and any workflow where subsequent steps (parsing, cleaning, or validation) operate on a known, structured representation derived from the rawlist. They serve as a staging area before structured processing.

Related concepts include raw data, lists and arrays, buffers, queues, and data normalization. The exact semantics of a rawlist depend on the domain and programming language, so definitions may vary between applications.