With Lisp-2 designs as discussed in the article this is not an issue, as variables and functions are in different namespaces: CL-USER> (defun foo (list) (lis

With Lisp-2 designs as discussed in the article this is not an issue, as variables and functions are in different namespaces: CL-USER> (defun foo (list) (list list)) FOO CL-USER> (foo 42) (42) In this case the function attached to the symbol LIST is applied to the argument with the same name, but that isn't a problem. To further illustrate, in the above example the LIST symbol is imported from the package COMMON-LISP and has a function, plist etc. attached to it: CL-USER> (symbol-package 'list) #<PACKAGE "COMMON-LISP"> CL-USER> (symbol-function 'list) #<FUNCTION LIST> CL-USER> (symbol-plist 'list) NIL