[racket] Stuck on HtDP 25.2.6

From: Luke Jordan (luke.jordan at gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 25 17:47:46 EDT 2010

#| 25.2.6

Develop a variant of quick-sort that uses only one comparison function, say,
<. Its partitioning step divides the given list alon into a list that
contains the items of alon smaller than (first alon) and another one with
those that are not smaller.

Use local to combine the functions into a single function. Then abstract the
new version to consume a list and a comparison function:
;; general-quick-sort : (X X  ->  bool) (list X)  ->  (list X)
(define (general-quick-sort a-predicate a-list) ...) |#

I've been stuck on this for over 90 minutes.  Will someone please rephrase
the question or help me think about it a different way?  I can't think of a
way to accomplish the sort using only one relational operator (<).  Am I
reading it wrong?  It sounds like I'm supposed to build two lists at the
same time and if a given input member is smaller than a threshold it goes in
one and if not it goes in the other.  I can't wrap my head around how to
make that happen.  I'm sure that if I could just hear the problem a
different way then I could make progress.  There is some meaning in my head
that is out of sync with what's written that is blocking me from seeing how
to approach this problem.  Thanks--

Luke
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