But that cons is broken, such that you can't construct lists of strings. For a correct implementation of cons, the following gives a list '("a" "b") of two str

But that cons is broken, such that you can't construct lists of strings. For a correct implementation of cons, the following gives a list '("a" "b") of two strings: (cons "a" (cons "b" ())) and (list "a" "b") is just sugar for the above. This doesn't work if you redefine cons on strings to mean concat. In other words, if (cons "a" "bc") gives you "abc", then it's not cons.