LISP Machines had all this long before

http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
LISP Machine will automatically discover its configuration, finding its network address, the namespace server, etc. CHAOS probably had all this long before DHCP first appeared in 1996

>>28
hard to implement backtracking
Traditionally in Scheme, this was done with explicit failure and success continuations that you passed in to the function. The pattern matcher and parser combinator libraries I use both work this under the hood.