Lisp with-in a Lisp

I am trying to run a lisp in a lisp .... I wrote it as such:

(setq lst2 (sort lst2))

It should run "lst2" thru a little lisp to obtain a new "lst2" value.
For some reason it is not working correctly. Is the codeing bad?

Example: if lst2 = 1 2 3 4
lst2 goes to the lisp labeled "sort" and should returm 4 3 2 1

here is the sort lisp...

( defun SORT (Lst / NewList temp big TempList y x limit)
( setq x (length Lst) )
( while ( /= x 1)
( setq pos 0 )
( setq big (nth pos Lst) )
( setq i 1 )
( setq limit (- x 1 ) )
( repeat limit
( setq temp (nth i Lst) )
( if (> (atoi (car temp)) (atoi (car big)) )
( setq big temp pos i )
)
( setq i (+ i 1) )
)

( setq NewList ( cons big NewList ) )
( if ( = pos 0 )
( setq Lst (cdr Lst) )
( progn
( setq TempList (list (car Lst)) )
( setq y (length Lst))
( setq y (- y 1) i 0 )
( while (< i y )
( setq i (+ 1 i) )
( if ( /= pos i )
( setq TempList (cons (nth i Lst) TempList))
)
)
( setq Lst TempList )
)
)
( setq x (- x 1) )
)
(setq NewList ( cons (car Lst) NewList ) )
(setq Lst NewList )
)

 

i get this error when running your code:
**ERROR 2: bad argument type: consp 3...
meaning you are passing the wrong type of variable to one of the methods... on looking a little deeper I found where this occurs:
( if (> (atoi (car temp)) (atoi (car big)) )
more specifically: (car temp) and (car big) when you called (nth pos Lst) you extracted the element at position pos, and then in your if statement you are saying you want to extract the first element of that element. Obviously you can only extract the first element from a list. hence the error.
When I fixed this there was another error, here: (atoi temp) you are now trying to convert a string to an integer, but it is already an integer.
here is the correction (with your line commented out):
;( if (> (atoi (car temp)) (atoi (car big)) )
(if (> temp big)
oh... and if you want it to sort in descending order as in your example it should be like this:
(if (> big temp)

 

I see.. I am such a rookie.
To expand on my question: is there a down and dirty way to have the sort to return 3142 instead of 4321? I figure if I learn to manipulate this kind of lisp, it would really help me out on other lisp routines that I have.

Thank you for your time and effort for helping me out.

 

To expand on my question: is there a down and dirty way to have the sort
to return 3142 instead of 4321?

What are you trying to do? What is the sort criterion? First you posted an
example where the the list was simply reversed, to descending order. I don't
see any pattern in the order shown above, and can't deduce what your goal
is.

 

Sorry for not explaining myself. The SORT lisp helps put info in a desired order.

Example: Curve data....... Tangent, Length, curve number, delta, and radius.

Because I had to change my blocks labels around, my table lisp is not working right. it reads the tangent and writes it to the length label and the delta gets written to the tangent label , etc....

So I would like to get this problem fixed. If you would like a copy of my original lisp I have no problem e-mailing them to you for evaluation or use. I just need to get this problem solved.

Thank you for your quick reply

 

radius.

That's more understandable. However I probably won't have time to study your
lisp in detail to suggest changes, but others might do this if you post it.

As a general observation, though, this is the kind of thing that makes you
realize the value of an association list. The data doesn't depend on the
list order to be meaningful, and you can make use of built-in functions like
assoc and subst to work with the list. Nearly every time I've written
something that depends on a list of data in a certain order, I've regretted
it. The association list format is more forgiving, more easily upgradeable,
and more natural to to Acad's data structure.

If you need to rework your lisp significantly, maybe this would be a good
time to make that change. For instance, your curve data might take the form

(setq curve_data '(( "tangent" . <n>) ("length" . <n>) ("curvenumber" . <n>)
etc.))

Then the length parameter is simply (cdr (assoc "length" curve_data)). The
order of the list doesn't matter. It's also self-documenting, since the
group code labels identify what the numbers mean.

Just a thought.

 

I never thought of it that way.... I'll TRY IT AT HOME AND I'll KEEP YOU UPDATED...... thanks A LOT

 

The SORT is not working due to the line where it's called has been commented
out:

(setq lst2 (append lst2 (list lst1)))
) ; repeat
;(setq lst2 (sort lst2)) ;<<<<<-----Remove the semi-colon form the
beginning of this line
;(princ lst2)
(setq vals-l (mapcar '(lambda (x) (car x)) lst2))

I am unable to test at this time, but that should get you back on track.

 

Tried it, but no luck. It seems to be sorting by either the "length" label or the "radius" label, not by the curve label.

Thanks for any help you can give me.