How do you return the description of a procedure in Scheme?

Question

Suppose I have something like this:

(define pair (cons 1 (lambda (x) (* x x))

If I want to return the front object of the pair I do this:

Answer 1

The procedure cons evaluates its arguments: 1 is self-evaluating to 1; (lambda ...) evaluates to an anonymous procedure. If you want to 'prevent' evaluation, you need to quote the argument, as such:

> (define pair (cons 1 '(lambda (x) (* x x))
> (cdr pair)
(lambda (x) (* x x))