title: Ordering of needle / haystack in Lisp functions
body: <p>While learning Lisp, I've seen that if there are two parameters to a function, where one is a single element or a subset (needle), and the other is a list (haystack), the element or subset always comes first.</p>
  
  <p>Examples:</p>
  
  <pre><code>(member 3 '(3 1 4 1 5))
  (assoc 'jane '((jane doe)
                 (john doe)))
  (subsetp '(a e) '(a e i o u))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To me, it seems as if there was a rule in Lisp that functions should follow this guidance: Part first, entire thing second.</p>
  
  <p>Is this finding actually based on a guideline in Lisp, or is it accidentally?</p>