Formal comment #205 (enhancement)

add list* or cons*
Reported by: 	Kent Dybvig
Version: 	5.92

Description:

The list* procedure (aka. cons*) provided by Common Lisp and some
Scheme systems is like list but puts its last argument in the cdr of
the final pair. If only one argument is supplied, it returns that
argument. It does not accept zero arguments. For example:

(list* 1 2 '(3 4 5)) ;=> (1 2 3 4 5)
(list* 1 2 3) ;=> (1 2 . 3)
(list* 1) ;=> 1

In my experience this is a handy procedure to have at the user level
and is the list-processing procedure I use most often outside of those
already contained in the report. It's also useful in the expansion of
quasiquote to produce more readable code than the equivalent sets of
nested conses, and may be useful in other, user-written
code-construction macros. It's also less work for an implementation to
generate efficient code for list* than for the equivalent set of
nested conses.

The name cons* used by MIT Scheme and possibly others is probably more
descriptive than the name list*, but the name list* is probably
compatible with a larger body of code.

Proposal:

Add either list* or cons*.


RESPONSE:

The suggested procedure will be added under the name `cons*'.