[3-13] Why does my program's behavior change each time I use it?

Most likely your program is altering itself, and the most common way this
may happen is by performing destructive operations on embedded constant
data structures.  For instance, consider the following:

   (defun one-to-ten-except (n)
     (delete n '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)))
   (one-to-ten-except 3) => (1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)
   (one-to-ten-except 5) => (1 2 4 6 7 8 9 10) ; 3 is missing

The basic problem is that QUOTE returns its argument, *not* a copy of
it. The list is actually a part of the lambda expression that is in
ONE-TO-TEN-EXCEPT's function cell, and any modifications to it (e.g., by
DELETE) are modifications to the actual object in the function definition.
The next time that the function is called, this modified list is used.

In some implementations calling ONE-TO-TEN-EXCEPT may even result in
the signalling of an error or the complete aborting of the Lisp process.  Some
Lisp implementations put self-evaluating and quoted constants onto memory
pages that are marked read-only, in order to catch bugs such as this.
Details of this behavior may vary even within an implementation,
depending on whether the code is interpreted or compiled (perhaps due to
inlined DEFCONSTANT objects or constant folding optimizations).

All of these behaviors are allowed by the draft ANSI Common Lisp
specification, which specifically states that the consequences of modifying
a constant are undefined (X3J13 vote CONSTANT-MODIFICATION:DISALLOW).

To avoid these problems, use LIST to introduce a list, not QUOTE. QUOTE
should be used only when the list is intended to be a constant which
will not be modified.  If QUOTE is used to introduce a list which will
later be modified, use COPY-LIST to provide a fresh copy.

For example, the following should all work correctly:

   o  (remove 4 (list 1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5))
   o  (remove 4 '(1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5))   ;; Remove is non-destructive.
   o  (delete 4 (list 1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5))
   o  (let ((x (list 1 2 4 1 3 4 5)))
        (delete 4 x))
   o  (defvar *foo* '(1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5))
      (delete 4 (copy-list *foo*))
      (remove 4 *foo*)
      (let ((x (copy-list *foo*)))
         (delete 4 x))

The following, however, may not work as expected:

   o  (delete 4 '(1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5))

Note that similar issues may also apply to hard-coded strings. If you
want to modify elements of a string, create the string with MAKE-STRING.