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Perhaps it doesn't belong in this srfi, and it doesn't seem very Scheme-ish, but I was wondering if anyone had given thought to C-style comparisons that yield positive, negative or zero on comparison (as in strcmp)? This lets you write efficient short-circuit tests such as: int pred (obj a, obj b) { return ((cheap_func(a) - cheap_func(b)) || (expensive_func(a) - expensive_func(b))) < 0; } where it is rare for the initial comparison to be zero. As it is now, you have to either sort twice or build a custom sort pred. Building new procedures is what Scheme is all about, so for the latter method I use the following utility: (define (chain-sort-predicate key1 pred<1 pred=1 key2 pred<2 . rest) (define (make-sort-predicate key pred) (if (eq? key identity) pred (lambda (a b) (pred (key a) (key b))))) (let ((secondary (if (null? rest) (make-sort-predicate key2 pred<2) (apply chain-sort-predicate (append (list key2 pred<2) rest))))) (lambda (a b) (let ((a1 (key1 a)) (b1 (key1 b))) (or (pred<1 a1 b1) (and (pred=1 a1 b1) (secondary a b))))))) which, without the sort-keys and variable-arity could just be (define (chain-sort-predicate pred<1 pred=1 pred<2) (lambda (a b) (or (pred<1 a b) (and (pred=1 a b) (pred<2 a b))))) which lets you do (sort data (chain-sort-predicate pred<1 pred=1 pred<2)) but the problem arises when pred<1 and pred=1 are not so cheap. Usually the steps needed to determine their value are the same, so it is a waste to make the computation twice. The solution in other languages is to define a general purpose comparator, cmp in Python, <=> in Perl, which returns this trinary value. [This is also useful in general for OO-programming because you can define just this method and you get <, >, =, et al for free on a given class.] Then you can sort with something-like (sort data (lambda (a b) (nzero-or (cmp1 a b) (cmp2 a b)))) and maybe define utilities to make that cleaner. Anyway, just some rambling, thought I'd mention it... -- Alex