[racket] datum-intern-literal and lists?

Hi everyone,

Is there a reason to use the function "datum-intern-literal" on a list
structure?  According to the documentation, datum-intern-literal does
not traverse compound values, so I'm unsure about its use on list
structures.

I'm curious because I'm staring at the definition of decode-string in
scribble/decode, and it's trying to apply datum-intern-literal against
a whole list, which seems strange to me:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(define (decode-string s)
  (let loop ([l '((#rx"---" mdash)
                  (#rx"--" ndash)
                  (#rx"``" ldquo)
                  (#rx"''" rdquo)
                  (#rx"'" rsquo))])
    (cond [(null? l) (list s)]
          [(regexp-match-positions (caar l) s)
           => (lambda (m)
                (datum-intern-literal
                 (append (decode-string (substring s 0 (caar m)))
                         (cdar l)
                         (decode-string (substring s (cdar m))))))]
          [else (loop (cdr l))])))
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


I'm looking at this function because the Racket statistical profiler
is telling me that it might be helpful to optimize it.  I had expected
something more along the lines of:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(define (decode-string s)
  (define pattern #rx"(---|--|``|''|')")
  (let loop ([start 0])
    (cond
     [(regexp-match-positions pattern s start)
      => (lambda (m)
           (define the-match (substring s (caar m) (cdar m)))
           (list* (substring s start (caar m))
                  (cond
                   [(string=? the-match "---") 'mdash]
                   [(string=? the-match "--") 'ndash]
                   [(string=? the-match "``") 'ldquo]
                   [(string=? the-match "''") 'rdquo]
                   [(string=? the-match "'") 'rsquo])
                  (loop (cdar m))))]
     [else
      (list (substring s start))])))
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

but I'm not sure about the role of the datum-intern-literal stuff with
regards to lists.