Here are some suggestions for how to solve homework 1:

	the command string turns a symbol-name into a string

	the command char extracts a character out of a string

	make sure you use the appropriate syntax for comparing characters
	to characters (for example #\c is the character c)

	using recursion will make these problems quite easy, a template
	for each of the match programs is:

	    (defun mymatch (pattern valuelist)
		(let ((patternlength (length pattern))
		      (valuelength (length valuelist)))
		   (cond ((\= patternlength valuelength) '())
			 ((= patternlength 0) 't)
			 ((equal-some-how (first pattern) (first valuelist))
			  (mymatch (rest pattern) (rest valuelist)))
			 ('t '()))))

	remember you are in an interpreted environment -- if something
	is going wrong you can call subfunctions to find out where the
	problem is ...