On Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:05:12 +0200 Thorsten wrote: > thanks Nick and Stepan, > > "evaluate the form after "," and quote the result" > > that made me understand what its all about. > I just read the backquote section Elisp manual, it does not cover these > strange combiniations of barely distinguable characters, but I may haved > missed it - its a thick book.
You haven't missed anything. My point was that "the pieces are all there" -- as Nick pointed out by the rewriting, 'foo is just a convenient read syntax for (quote foo), so there's nothing special or new about `',foo, it's still manipulating a list structure in a way the manual describes. I'm sure you can find more resources on the net, as the same notation is used in other Lisps, in particular Common Lisp and Scheme. Two examples I know of: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/02_df.htm http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041205.html (And by the way, if you really find ' and ` "barely distinguishable", perhaps you might consider using another font? It's an important distinction to make, as you've now found. ;-)) -- Štěpán