(defun insert-n-sort (predicate element list)
  (cond
   ((null list) (cons element list))
   ((and (funcall predicate element (car list))
         (not (funcall predicate (car list) element)))
    (cons element list))
   (t
    (cons (car list) (insert-n-sort predicate element (cdr list))))))

However this solution is not complete.  I am not sure line 18 is something
you want the function to be capable of doing unless the numbers are sorted
in descending order..

CL-USER 17 > (insert-n-sort '< 7 '(2 4 5 6 8 10))
(2 4 5 6 7 8 10)

CL-USER 18 > (insert-n-sort '> 7 '(2 4 5 6 8 10))  ;; wrong answer
(7 2 4 5 6 8 10)

CL-USER 19 >

  Well, Franz Lisp is extinct, and the newsgroup is basically dead.  Stuff
  that is clearly about Macintosh Common Lisp should definitely go in their
  own newsgroup.

  Incidentally, have you seen Sam Steingold answer _every_ question about
  CLISP with a suggestion to use the CLISP mailing list?  This is OK with
  you, but keeping your D*lan propaganda to comp.lang.dylan is not.  Why?

| Or, conversely, that if the groups comp.lang.lisp.scheme and
| comp.lang.lisp.dylan had been proposed and passed, that discussion of
| those would then be welcome here?

  I think you are nuts.

BTW, it occurred to me that the maplist/return-from thing was in effect
doing this:

  1) find the cons insertion point
  2) splice in the new value

and that the MEMBER family returns conses, so... I also ducked a progn
in the splice by using a multiple-pair SETF, and punched up the data
names a little:

(defun insert-n-sort (p elm presorted-lis)
  (let ((ip-cons (member-if (lambda (ps-elm)
                               (funcall p elm ps-elm))
                             presorted-lis)))
    (if ip-cons
          (setf
           (cdr ip-cons) (cons (car ip-cons)
                                (cdr ip-cons))
           (car ip-cons) elm)
        (nconc presorted-lis (list elm))))

  presorted-lis)

did you ever work out why your algorithm did not work? i forgot all
about that myself. hint: i have not confirmed this, but it looks as if
one of the enhancements i made last time just happened to fix the bug.
You might want to just fix your algorithm and turn that in, nothing
wrong with it, just classic coming-up-to-speed  code.

--

Perhaps you'd like a place for the discussion of Common Lisp only.  Then
create one.  Call it comp.lang.common-lisp or whatever.

I'll note that comp.lang.clos already exists.  That's clearly a Common
Lisp only place, though perhaps the name suggests a more restrictive
range of topics are welcome than the *whole* of Common Lisp.  On the
other hand, it gets far less traffic than any of the other groups
discussed -- I see 36 posts in the last four months, of which five were
not spam or cross posted -- so I doubt that anyone would be too upset
with more general CL discussion there.

The answer is that one may specify more complicated patterns for keyword
(and optional) parameters.  In particular, the pattern
    (<name> <default-value> <value-supplied-p>)
solves exactly your problem:

(defun test (list1 list2 &key (k nil k-supplied-p))
  ...)

will have k-supplied-p bound to T if a value was supplied in the call
and it will be bound to NIL if no value was supplied (and the default
value was used instead).

"Thomas A. Russ" <t...@sevak.isi.edu> wrote in message
news:ymiofhueve5.fsf@sevak.isi.edu...

  I disagree with this, but not on your premises.  People who come here to
  preach about "how things are done in D*lan" or "Scheme is elegant and
  does it right" are expressly _not_ trying to aim for that "common ground"
  between all Lisp members, but are idiotic trolls you abuse the ability to
  post anything to any newsgroup even though they have their own playpens
  where such opinionated huffing and puffing is accepted.  comp.lang.lisp
  is not a union of comp.lang.dylan.advocacy or comp.lang.scheme.advocacy.

| Perhaps you'd like a place for the discussion of Common Lisp only.  Then
| create one.  Call it comp.lang.common-lisp or whatever.

  I am sure such a proposal would get your vote.  Would you promise to keep
  your D*lan propaganda out of comp.lang.common-lisp?  And could we kick
  every single Scheme freak in the groin if they invaded the newsgroup with
  their stupid Lisp-1 and "functional" and "elegance" rhetoric?  Then
  comp.lang.lisp could be that "common ground" between D*lan and Scheme.
  However, the last time I tried to figure out if such a commonality even
  could exist, it looked so much like a black hole I expected a baby
  universe to pop out.

  The notion that the "Lisp family" would enjoy a family reunion is sick.
  Much like people who have gone their separate ways and denouncing their
  heritage when making things "better" in their own particular view, D*lan
  and Scheme have _departed_ from the Lisp family and have made their own
  small families, instead.  This is healthy.  You don't see Java and C++
  and C# folks fill up comp.lang.c because of their "heritage", do you?

  What _is_ it about "Lisp" that makes D*lan and Scheme freaks still want
  to be a member of the family?  All you guys do is denounce Common Lisp.
  You certainly do _not_ discuss issues that are common to the Lisp family.

I'm sorry some past people have posted nasty things "in the name of
Scheme".  Such things are bad.

But it's just as bad to post trolls about "why Common Lisp is the best
thing ever".

Let's see.  Common Lisp people on comp.lang.lisp spend lots of energy
denegrating Scheme.

I've never seen *any* posts on comp.lang.scheme that are concerned to
denegrate Common Lisp.

Do I think there are things done better in Dylan than in CL?  Sure.  
Being designed later and with hindsight it would be astouding if there
weren't.  Do I think there are things done better in CL than in Dylan?  
That's one reason I'm here: to find out.  I've already taken one thing
that I think CL does better and implemented it in Gwydion Dylan -- that
is the ability to have a loop control clause that abbreviates "foo = bar
then baz" to just "foo = bar" where bar and baz happen to be the same
expression.

I have no doubt there will be more in future.

Quite the contrary, there are a number of obvious examples of people who
are or have been active in multiple languages.  The creator of Scheme
had a hand in the definition of Common Lisp.  Kent Pitman has done work
with both.  Many Dylan people have been prominent in Common Lisp and I
can think of several who post here fairly regularly.

If there are in fact people involved around the time of the creation of
Dylan who denounced Common Lisp then they are either keeping very quiet
about it, or else are no longer active in the Dylan community.

Perhaps you have better information, but the oldest information I have
is the 1992 Dylan book which Apple sent for free to anyone who asked for
it.  Allow me to quote from the preface:

  Apple already has one OODL product: Macintosh Common Lisp.  Dylan
  is intended to complement Common Lisp, not to replace it.  Common
  Lisp is a rich environment defined by a standard and available in
  compatible implementations on a broad range of platforms.  Dylan
  is lean and stripped down to a minimum feature set.  At present
  Dylan is not available on any platform (outside Apple), but is
  intended to run on a wide variety of machines, including very small
  machines that don't have the horsepower to support a modern Common
  Lisp.  Common Lisp is aimed primarily at the Lisp community, while
  Dylan is accessible to application developers unfamiliar with Lisp.
  Common Lisp is oriented more towards exploratory programming with
  delivery capability, while Dylan is oriented more towards delivery
  with exploratory capability.

Some things in the world have changed since then -- primarily that all
machines have gotten bigger and faster, and that CL compilers such as
CMUCL have gotten much better -- but I think the last sentence still
applies even today.

I don't see any hostility towards Common Lisp.  There was a decision --
not taken lightly -- that differeing goals were best met by creating a
new language with much in common with CL.

There does, on the other hand, seem to be a lot of lingering hostility
from those in the CL community who think that the effort would have been
better spent on developing CL itself, rather than dividing efforts.  
This is very visible even today, with the recent denouncement from
several quarters of a Common Lisp stalwart such as Paul Graham.

What is it that makes you *want* to deny that?

  I disagree.  Among the remaining Lisps, it is the best thing ever.  Those
  who have thought otherwise, have left for other pastures, like D*lan and
  Scheme and Arc.  There are not "better" than Common Lisp by a long shot.

| Let's see.  Common Lisp people on comp.lang.lisp spend lots of energy
| denegrating Scheme.

  No, they don't.  They spend some time rejecting the Scheme propaganda.  I
  think you need to pay attention to who is arguing for and against things.

| I've never seen *any* posts on comp.lang.scheme that are concerned to
| denegrate Common Lisp.

  That is because they post it here!  Christ, are you trolling or what?

You seem concerned that there are lots of Scheme people saying "Scheme
is the only thing worth considering", but I can't see any of them.
Nary a one.  But what I *do* is you arguing, every chance you get,
that Common Lisp is the One True Lisp Dialect.

  I wish I did.  If I want to learn about D*lan, I read comp.lang.dylan.
  If I wish to learn about Scheme, I read comp.lang.scheme.  If I do not
  wish to learn about either, I do not read these newsgroup, but thanks to
  people who have no concept of what other people would like to discuss
  where, I have to wade through one "comparison" after another and much
  more "information" about Scheme freaks and their preferences than I would
  like to suffer.

| I've looked for it but in fact you are the *only* person I've ever seen
| who has expressed such hostility.

  This is sheer nonsense.

| Quite the contrary, there are a number of obvious examples of people who
| are or have been active in multiple languages.

  You cannot portray a city as "safe" by pointing to how many nice people
  live in it, and it is quite amazing that you have to go on such a stupid
  propaganda trip.

| The creator of Scheme had a hand in the definition of Common Lisp.  Kent
| Pitman has done work with both.  Many D*lan people have been prominent in
| Common Lisp and I can think of several who post here fairly regularly.

  This proves exactly nothing.

| There does, on the other hand, seem to be a lot of lingering hostility
| from those in the CL community who think that the effort would have been
| better spent on developing CL itself, rather than dividing efforts.

  Perhaps you would arrive at a less self-serving conclusion if you could
  try to remember how D*lan dropped its sensible syntax?

| This is very visible even today, with the recent denouncement from
| several quarters of a Common Lisp stalwart such as Paul Graham.

  Paul Graham is a Common Lisp _stalwart_?  He has spent lots of time and
  effort telling the world he does _not_ like Common Lisp, why loop is bad
  and wrong, and done a remarkable job of re-creating Scheme in Common Lisp.

| It's not a question of *want*.  These languages *are* closely related
| members of the same family -- far more closely related to each other
| than any of them is to any other language.
|
| What is it that makes you *want* to deny that?

  Their remarkably important differences.

| You're welcome to your opinion, but I believe it to be false.

  Of course you do.

  Nonsense.  You keep arguing for why Scheme is better than Common Lisp.

| You seem concerned that there are lots of Scheme people saying "Scheme is
| the only thing worth considering", but I can't see any of them.  Nary a
| one.  But what I *do* is you arguing, every chance you get, that Common
| Lisp is the One True Lisp Dialect.

  Really?  Where?  Perhaps you can quote me on this?

  If you cannot find me actually saying that, perhaps you need to think a
  little about how you arrived at this ludicrous conclusion?  Perhaps you
  can think a litle about how the annoying Scheme propagandists keep
  arguing that Scheme is, precisely, better than Common Lisp by virtue of
  some individual feature, like, _your_ preference for call/cc, for
  instance.

  I thought you said you had some training in philosophy, yet you keep
  making trivial mistakes, like not being able to distinguish arguments
  against what you are for from arguments for what you are against, and now
  this amazing lack of intellectual honesty in differentiating between what
  you see and what you conclude must have been.  People who impute intent
  to other people and think they have _seen_ this intent are hopelessly
  lost in their own view of the world -- because they first have to realize
  that they do _not_ observe anybody's intent, they have concluded it from
  what they have seen and what _they_ have brought to the conclusions.

  I want a place where we can discuss Common Lisp issues without having to
  wade through tons of negative commentary about Common Lisp.  You
  obviously fail to understand how your _own_ comments are negative and
  could use and sometimes _require_ a rejection of your arguments.  What is
  this obnoxious nonsense about comparing Common Lisp to PL/1, for instance?
  You, of all people, who get incensed when I ridicule Scheme a little,
  do in fact spend a lot of your time denigrating Common Lisp in this forum.

| Who is this "they"?  Can we see names or Message-ID's or something?

  You, Thomas Bushnell.

I think both Scheme and Common Lisp are good things; I have no clue
what would ever be gained if one were "proven" better than the other.

I'm entirely happy to institute a new rule: nobody insults any other
language at all; I'll drop the PL/I reference, and you can drop the
toy reference.  That would please me no end.

  Yet you were insulted by and found my "jibe" strongly provocative.
  Something is clearly amiss here.

| I think both Scheme and Common Lisp are good things; I have no clue
| what would ever be gained if one were "proven" better than the other.

  The point is not which is better, which where people are allowed to
  believe so.  Scheme freaks have comp.lnag.scheme as their haven of belief
  in Scheme's superiority, Common Lisp programmers have comp.lang.lisp, and
  D*lan users have comp.lnag.dylan.  In _this_ newsgroup and _this_
  community, we have a _right_ to think that what we use is the best of all
  possible things around,   It is that right that is continually challenged
  by naysayers and fault-finders who come from D*lan and Scheme camps in
  particular.

| > | You seem concerned that there are lots of Scheme people saying
| > | "Scheme is the only thing worth considering", but I can't see any of
| > | them.  Nary a one.  But what I *do* is you arguing, every chance you
| > | get, that Common Lisp is the One True Lisp Dialect.
| >
| >   Really?  Where?  Perhaps you can quote me on this?
|
| Um, perhaps because of your insistence that the only proper topic for
| comp.lang.lisp is Common Lisp?

  So you admit that I have never actually said anything _like_ what you
  _lie_ about that I have done.  You are intellectually dishonest, Thomas
  Bushnell.

  Your ability to draw conclusions does not give you any right to make
  claims about what _others_ have argued or said or meant or intended.
  Keep these apart, will you?  Where is your philosophical training if you
  cannot even manage to distinguish your observations from your conclusions?

| Um, no, I didn't say Scheme was "better" in the abstract.  Scheme has
| a nifty feature that Common Lisp lacks.  Whether that makes Scheme
| "better" or not is a foolish question, since both Scheme and Common
| Lisp have strengths and weaknesses, and I don't have any particular
| interest in which is "better".

  Why, then, do you keep posting about stuff that you know that people in
  this community have expressly rejected as less valuable or even as abject
  misfeatures?  You are _trolling_, Thomas Bushnell.

| Ah, no, I only compare Common Lisp to PL/I when Scheme is called a toy.

  Liar.

| Part of that is because calling languages "toys" way predates you;
| indeed, IIRC, the first people to adopt that charming little term were
| PL/I users who thought Algol-like languages were mere toys, not useful
| for any serious programming.

  Memory of past ills is _such_ a boon for responding to what is at hand.

| I'm entirely happy to institute a new rule: nobody insults any other
| language at all; I'll drop the PL/I reference, and you can drop the toy
| reference.  That would please me no end.

  Once again, we see how one person needs to try to control another person
  in order to behave wisely in his own terms.  This is such a pattern with
  you losers who do something bad and refuse to accept responsiblity for it.

  I have no gripes with Scheme at all until and unless some Scheme freaks
  fires up his propaganda engine.  I do not read comp.lang.scheme because I
  think Scheme really sucks as a language.  I do not read comp.lang.perl
  because I thin perl is the suckiest language on the planet.  I do not
  read comp.text.xml because those who work with XML are such uninspiring
  dorks.  There is sufficient room here to vent frustration with loser
  languages like Perl and XML that nobody keeps telling anyone that both
  are "really" Lisps -- Perl has a lot of Lisp nature, and XML is basically
  only a highly elaborate s-expression syntax --

| > | Who is this "they"?  Can we see names or Message-ID's or something?
| >
| >   You, Thomas Bushnell.
|
| Let's see the Message-IDs now.  Put up or shut up.

  This, after you have lied and misrepsented me to no end, and you could
  not even cough up a reference to your own claims about what I have said?
  Such gall!  Such chutzpah!  Get lost, troll.

What is your objection to Dylan's syntax?

Until the last year or so I never saw a bad word said about him.

"The good news is, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp."

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002 04:23:57 GMT, Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com>
wrote:

" Hmmm, he sounds like a Schemer!  Actually, the most ultimate and
purest Lisp dialect I know of is 3-Lisp, which is so clean and regular
that it makes any Scheme look like a kludge.  Brian Smith pointed out
that (for instance) conses are used in a multitude of ways in most
Lisps, while in 3-Lisp conses are only used for function applications;
the "rail" data structure is used for lists/sequences.  Quotes don't
"fall off" as a result of evaluation; as a result, one doesn't get the
Lisp oddity (+ 2 '3) => 5.  Closures are ordinary data structures with
4 slots.  Reflection gives one great power, in fact it hasn't really
been exploited yet. 3-Lisp is the way to go for true language purists.

        stan"

Anyone for 3-Lisp?

Lars

  What is keeping you from understanding that D*lan has its own newsgroup,
  chartered and FAQ'ed to be the "home forum" for D*lan users?  Why do you
  have to keep posting here about how D*lan does its things?  Do you not
  trust those who would be interested in D*lan to find it on their own
  accord so you have to constantly remind them of it, like some spamming
  advertiser?  What is it that you cannot understand about newsgroup
  dynamics that makes you _fight_ for a right to annoy people who expressly
  direct you to go back to your D*lan newsgroup?  Why is this something you
  feel you have a _right_ to do?  How would someone be received over in
  comp.lang.dylan if they answered every question with a Common Lisp
  solution to a D*lan problem?  The same goes for Scheme, for exactly the
  same reason.

  This is rich.  Nonsense cannot be refuted, you illiterate gnome.

| That's a matter on which reasonable people can disagree.

  Yes, and those who think Nicklaus Wirth did it right are generally in
  comp.lang.dylan and those who think John McCarth was right are generally
  in comp.lang.lisp.

| What is your objection to Dylan's syntax?

  Duh.  That you dropped the fully parenthesized prefix syntax.

| I guess I'm imagining books such as "ANSI Common Lisp" and "On Lisp",
| and the fact that he made a fortune using Lisp.

  Quit the moron act and THINK, goddamnit!

| Until the last year or so I never saw a bad word said about him.

  Could be that he tilted only last year, or you that power of observation
  leave a lot to be desired.  The latter seem fairly obviously a problem.

| Which are far fewer than their similarities.

  That is a matter upon which reasonable men can and do disagree.

  In particular, why is it so important to you to _dismiss_ what I think,
  and to try to _force_ me to accept your gospel as truth?  I _reject_ what
  you tell me about D*lan's "lispness".  _Why_ do you have the facts and I
  am wrong about this?  I am not alone in this regard at all, either, as if
  that mattered to anyone who can think, but numbers appear to matter to
  you.  D*lan is not a big winner in _any_ sense.  So get used to the
  rejection and find consolation among those who agree with you and accept
  your choices.  Over here in comp.lang.lisp we are in fact so tolerant of
  you negative, disrespectful, rejecting miscreants that we even have to
  fight you off because you seem to use each other as rationale for the
  acceptance of your trolling and abuse of this forum for your ill-
  conceived propaganda, completely disregarding the will of residents, and
  the more they object to your behavior, the more you seek vindication for
  your bad behavior and your counter-productive ways, and the more you seek
  to blame those who do not want you to engage in inflammatory nonsense.

  Of all the language newsgroups I read, comp.lang.lisp is the _only_ one
  to suffer obnoxious bastards from other language camps who claim to have
  a "right" to post their trolling and language wars (a.k.a. "information
  and comparison") in another language's newsgroup.  Most people know that
  this is bad, but not D*lan and Scheme freaks.  They must fight for their
  right to troll and incense comp.lang.lisp.  One has to wonder what kind
  of inferiority complex has resulted in this desire to annoy people in a
  hope to be recognized even after they have expressly distanced themselves
  from those from whom they seek acceptance and recognition.