Question

I know the basic algorithm for this problem but I am having trouble changing the sentence into a list inside my conditional. I created make-list to make it easier on myself but I’m not sure where to put it in the code. For ex, in the first cond statement, I need the sentence to be a list before I check if the first element in the sentence is a vowel.. but I have been doing it syntactically wrong.

vowel-ci? returns #t if a character is a case insensitive vowel, and #f otherwise.

stenotype takes a sentence and returns it with all vowels removed.

(define make-list
   (lambda (string)
     (string->list string)))

(define stenotype
  (lambda (sentence)
    (cond
      [(vowel-ci? (car sentence)) (stenotype (cdr sentence))]
      [else (cons (car sentence) (stenotype (cdr sentence)))])))

Answer 1

There are a few different tasks (preparing input so it can be processed by your implementation and the processing itself), which you’ve broken into two different functions. The next step is combining the functions, rather than rewriting the latter to use the former. The simplest way of combining functions is composition. Compose make-list and stenotype (you may wish to name this composition) and you’ll have your solution.

(define double
    (lambda (x) (* x 2)))

(define inc
    (lambda (x) (+ x 1)))

; one option: define a new function that's a composition    
(define double-inc
    (lambda (x) (inc (double x))))

; another option: compose the functions when you use them
(inc (double 23))

; yet another option: make the other functions local to the composition
; Useful if the other functions are subordinate to the composition, and 
; aren't useful outside of it. You often see this with recursive functions,
; where the outer function sets up a call to the recursive function
(define (double-inc x)
    (define (double x) (* x 2))
    (define (inc x) (+ x 1))
  (inc (double x)))

(define (max numbers)
    (define (max-recur maximum numbers)
      (cond ((eq? numbers '()) maximum)
            ((< maximum (car numbers)) (max-recur (car numbers) (cdr numbers)))
            (else (max-recur maximum (cdr numbers)))))
  (max-recur (car numbers) (cdr numbers)))

Note that you’re missing a base case in stenotype to end the recursion.