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Randal Schwartz stole Lisp's decorate-sort-undecorate idiom when he came up with what we'd later call the Schwartzian transform. All of my Lisp knowledge disappeared through nine half lives, but I gave it a shot in SBCL. I'm aiming for an idiomatic example I can use in a presentation about the history of the Schwartzian transform.

This works (and I know I can generalize it further), but I wonder how Lisp-y it is:

(require :sb-posix)
(defun schwartzian-files-mtime ( glob-pattern )
    (map
        'list
        #'cdr
        (stable-sort
            (map
                'list (
                    lambda (x) (
                        cons
                            (sb-posix:stat-mtime (sb-posix:stat x))
                            x
                        )
                    )
                (directory glob-pattern)
            )
            #'<
            :key
            #'car
        )
    )
)

(schwartzian-files-mtime "/etc/*")
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  • \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to codereview! I hope you get some nice answers ! More, feel free to visit our Perl section and answer whatever question might look interesting for you \$\endgroup\$ Aug 11, 2016 at 11:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's also not spelled LISP the same way that it's not spelled PERL. \$\endgroup\$
    – ferada
    Aug 11, 2016 at 13:32
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ @ferada LISP is LISt Processing. Perl is a name which is not an acronym. Often, LISP is capitalised as Lisp but I would posit that as wrong. \$\endgroup\$
    – cat
    Aug 11, 2016 at 14:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ Which LISP? The original LISP? This looks kinda like Scheme but more like CL. Is it CL? Which interpreter do i use to run it, and why isn't this confusing to anyone else? there are like, 10 different kinds of "real" LISP. \$\endgroup\$
    – cat
    Aug 11, 2016 at 14:44
  • 3
    \$\begingroup\$ @cat (map 'list ...) is certainly CL. Have you missed the I gave it a shot in sbcl in the quesiton? \$\endgroup\$
    – Will Ness
    Aug 11, 2016 at 16:39

2 Answers 2

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What is not enough LISP-y in your function is the style used for the parentheses (they should not be left alone as last element of a line and they should be on the last line of the enclosed form). Another minor point is that you can use the shorter mapcar instead of map 'list.

Here is a version of your function (generalized for any function applied to the data and any predicate) which follows the more conventional style used in Common Lisp.

(defun schwartzian-transform (list costly-function predicate)
"sort a list of objects over the value of a function applied to them,
by applying the Schwartzian Transform (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartzian_transform)
the parameters are the list, the function, and the predicate for the sort." 
  (mapcar #'cdr
          (stable-sort (mapcar (lambda (x)
                                 (cons (funcall costly-function x) x))
                               list)
                       predicate
                       :key #'car)))

(require :sb-posix)
(schwartzian-transform
 (directory "/etc/*")
 (lambda (x) (sb-posix:stat-mtime (sb-posix:stat x)))
 #'<=)
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  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ No documentation string? \$\endgroup\$ Aug 11, 2016 at 13:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ Nice transformation! The only thing I would change is to add space after lambda, although that's a small one. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 11, 2016 at 13:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MatthewRock, thanks! Sometimes I miss that space. \$\endgroup\$
    – Renzo
    Aug 11, 2016 at 13:27
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @WillNess, in ANSI Common Lisp both forms are equivalent. In the Google Common Lisp Style Guide both forms are allowed. I prefer the form without the #' since it is shorter but still very clear. \$\endgroup\$
    – Renzo
    Aug 11, 2016 at 20:45
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Yes I know they're equivalent, I had that impression about the style... Thanks for the link. \$\endgroup\$
    – Will Ness
    Aug 11, 2016 at 23:22
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What's certainly extremely very non-LISPy is your opening parens ending the line of code like that. With that, mapcar and explicit #' in front of lambda, it could look like

(defun schwartzian-files-mtime ( glob-pattern )
    (mapcar #'cdr
        (stable-sort
            (mapcar #'(lambda (x) 
                        (cons (sb-posix:stat-mtime (sb-posix:stat x))
                              x))
                    (directory glob-pattern))
            #'<
            :key #'car)))

This looks natural to me, but still may be off w.r.t. official style guidelines. It has a "quick-n-dirty" feel to it, like something you'd scribble on the spot (not unlike Randal's original piece of code), not a proper production code with documentation string etc..

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