RE: list strawman

["Steven Deller" <deller@smsail.com>]

Rather than implement the package, I have worked at taking the spec and
using it to in other code (I like to see how a package stands up to
usage before implementing it :-)).

I found I could NOT implement a simple quicksort with the package as
defined, at least not with any efficiency.  What was missing was a
simple way to split a list into two lists at the point of an iterator.

That seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in the interface.  Yes, I know
sorting is predefined in the interface, but as there is only ONE sort
predefined, I'd think users might want to implement their own sort.
(Not to mention I think including sorting in a fundamental list package
to be questionable -- though I can't see how to also include a "insert
sorted" function without the concept of sortedness, so maybe it makes
sense.)

Wouldn't it be useful to add a procedure that takes an iterator and
returns a new list, with the list where the iterator was pointing now
truncated to a shorter list?  (That is, it returns two lists, one of
which is implicitly referred to by the iterator.)

Regards,
Steve