An Introduction to Programming

in Emacs Lisp
 An Introduction to
Programming in Emacs Lisp

by Robert J. Chassell
This is An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, for people who are not
programmers.

Distributed with Emacs version 29.1.90.

Copyright 1990–1995, 1997, 2001–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Published by the:

GNU Press, https://www.fsf.org/licensing/gnu-press/ a division of the email:

sales@fsf.org
Free Software Foundation, Inc. Tel: +1 (617) 542-5942 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Fax: +1 (617) 542-2652
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

ISBN 1-882114-43-4
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; there being
no Invariant Section, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual”,
and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is
included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and
modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in
developing GNU and promoting software freedom.”
 i

Short Contents

Preface............................................................ 1
1 List Processing ............................................... 1
2 Practicing Evaluation........................................ 20
3 How To Write Function Definitions........................... 26
4 A Few Buffer-Related Functions.............................. 48
5 A Few More Complex Functions.............................. 59
6 Narrowing and Widening..................................... 73
7 car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions ...................... 77
8 Cutting and Storing Text .................................... 85
9 How Lists are Implemented ................................. 108
10 Yanking Text Back ......................................... 113
11 Loops and Recursion........................................ 115
12 Regular Expression Searches ................................ 141
13 Counting via Repetition and Regexps ....................... 155
14 Counting Words in a defun ................................. 167
15 Readying a Graph .......................................... 187
16 Your .emacs File ........................................... 196
17 Debugging.................................................. 215
18 Conclusion ................................................. 221
A The the-the Function...................................... 223
B Handling the Kill Ring...................................... 225
C A Graph with Labeled Axes ................................ 233
D Free Software and Free Manuals............................. 254
E GNU Free Documentation License .......................... 256
Index ........................................................... 265
ii

Table of Contents

Preface .......................................................... 1
On Reading this Text....................................................... 1 For Whom This is
Written.................................................. 2
Lisp History................................................................ 3 A Note for Novices
......................................................... 3
Thank You................................................................. 4

1 List Processing.............................................. 1
1.1 Lisp Lists ............................................................. 1
1.4.1 Lisp Atoms ...................................................... 1 1.1.2 Whitespace in Lists
.............................................. 2
1.1.3 GNU Emacs Helps You Type Lists ............................... 3
1.2 Run a Program ....................................................... 3 1.3 Generate an Error
Message............................................ 4
1.5 Symbol Names and Function Definitions ............................... 6
1.6 The Lisp Interpreter................................................... 6
1.6.1 Byte Compiling .................................................. 7
1.7 Evaluation ............................................................ 8
1.7.1 Evaluating Inner Lists............................................ 8
1.8 Variables.............................................................. 9
1.8.1 Error Message for a Symbol Without a Function................. 10
1.8.2 Error Message for a Symbol Without a Value.................... 10
1.9 Arguments........................................................... 11
1.9.1 Arguments’ Data Types......................................... 12 1.8.2 An Argument as
the Value of a Variable or List ................. 12
1.8.3 Variable Number of Arguments.................................. 13
1.8.4 Using the Wrong Type Object as an Argument .................. 13
1.8.5 The message Function .......................................... 14
1.10 Setting the Value of a Variable ....................................... 16
1.10.1 Using setq...................................................... 16 1.9.2 Counting
....................................................... 17
1.11 Summary ........................................................... 18
1.12 Exercises............................................................ 19

2 Practicing Evaluation ..................................... 20

2.1 Buffer Names ........................................................ 20
 iii

2.2 Getting Buffers ...................................................... 22 2.3 Switching Buffers

.................................................... 23
2.4 Buffer Size and the Location of Point................................. 24
2.5 Exercise.............................................................. 25
3 How To Write Function Definitions...................... 26
3.1 The defun Macro .................................................... 26
3.2 Install a Function Definition.......................................... 28
3.2.1 Change a Function Definition ................................... 29
3.3 Make a Function Interactive.......................................... 29
3.3.1 An Interactive multiply-by-seven.............................. 30
3.4 Different Options for interactive ................................... 31
3.5 Install Code Permanently ............................................ 32
3.6 let .................................................................. 33
3.6.1 The Parts of a let Expression................................... 34
3.6.2 Sample let Expression.......................................... 34
3.6.3 Uninitialized Variables in a let Statement....................... 35
3.6.4 How let Binds Variables........................................ 36 Differences Between Lexical
and Dynamic Binding .................. 36
Example of Lexical vs. Dynamic Binding ........................... 36
3.7 The if Special Form ................................................. 37
3.7.1 The type-of-animal Function in Detail......................... 39
3.8 If–then–else Expressions.............................................. 40
3.9 Truth and Falsehood in Emacs Lisp .................................. 41
3.10 save-excursion .................................................... 42
3.10.1 Template for a save-excursion Expression .................... 43
3.11 Review ............................................................. 44
3.12 Exercises............................................................ 47

4 A Few Buffer-Related Functions ......................... 48

4.1 Finding More Information............................................ 48
4.2 A Simplified beginning-of-buffer Definition........................ 49
4.3 The Definition of mark-whole-buffer................................ 50
4.3.1 Body of mark-whole-buffer.................................... 51
4.4 The Definition of append-to-buffer ................................. 52
4.4.1 The append-to-buffer Interactive Expression .................. 53 4.4.2 The Body
of append-to-buffer................................. 54 4.4.3 save-excursion in append-to-
buffer.......................... 55
4.5 Review............................................................... 57
4.6 Exercises............................................................. 58
iv

5 A Few More Complex Functions ......................... 59

5.1 The Definition of copy-to-buffer ................................... 59
5.2 The Definition of insert-buffer..................................... 60
5.2.1 The Interactive Expression in insert-buffer ................... 61 A Read-only
Buffer................................................. 61
‘b’ in an Interactive Expression ..................................... 61
5.2.2 The Body of the insert-buffer Function....................... 61
5.2.3 insert-buffer With an if Instead of an or .................... 62
5.2.4 The or in the Body ............................................. 63
5.2.5 The let Expression in insert-buffer .......................... 64
5.2.6 New Body for insert-buffer................................... 65
5.3 Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer ........................ 65
5.3.1 Optional Arguments ............................................ 66
5.3.2 beginning-of-buffer with an Argument ....................... 67 What happens in a large
buffer ..................................... 68
What happens in a small buffer..................................... 69
5.3.3 The Complete beginning-of-buffer ........................... 70
5.4 Review............................................................... 71
5.5 optional Argument Exercise......................................... 72

6 Narrowing and Widening ................................. 73

6.1 The save-restriction Special Form................................. 73
6.2 what-line ........................................................... 74
6.3 Exercise with Narrowing ............................................. 76

7 car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions................... 77

7.1 car and cdr ......................................................... 77
7.2 cons................................................................. 78
7.2.1 Find the Length of a List: length............................... 79
7.3 nthcdr............................................................... 80 7.4 nth
.................................................................. 81 7.5 setcar............................................................... 82 7.6
setcdr............................................................... 83
7.7 Exercise.............................................................. 84

8 Cutting and Storing Text................................. 85

8.1 zap-to-char......................................................... 85
8.1.1 The interactive Expression.................................... 86 8.1.2 The Body
of zap-to-char ...................................... 87
 v

8.1.3 The search-forward Function.................................. 87 8.1.4 The progn Special

Form ........................................ 88
8.1.5 Summing up zap-to-char ...................................... 89
8.2 kill-region......................................................... 89
8.2.1 condition-case ................................................ 91
8.2.2 Lisp macro...................................................... 93
8.3 copy-region-as-kill ............................................... 93
8.3.1 The Body of copy-region-as-kill............................. 95 The kill-append
function.......................................... 95
The kill-new function ............................................. 97
8.4 Digression into C ................................................... 102
8.5 Initializing a Variable with defvar .................................. 104
8.5.1 defvar and an asterisk......................................... 105
8.6 Review ............................................................. 105
8.7 Searching Exercises ................................................. 107

9 How Lists are Implemented ............................. 108

9.1 Symbols as a Chest of Drawers ...................................... 111
9.2 Exercise ............................................................ 112

10 Yanking Text Back ..................................... 113

10.1 Kill Ring Overview ................................................ 113
10.2 The kill-ring-yank-pointer Variable............................ 113
10.3 Exercises with yank and nthcdr.................................... 114

11 Loops and Recursion ................................... 115

11.1 while.............................................................. 115
11.1.1 A while Loop and a List ..................................... 116
11.1.2 An Example: print-elements-of-list ...................... 117
11.1.3 A Loop with an Incrementing Counter ........................ 118 Example with
incrementing counter................................ 118 The parts of the function
definition ................................ 119
Putting the function definition together............................ 120
11.1.4 Loop with a Decrementing Counter ........................... 122 Example with
decrementing counter ............................... 123 The parts of the function
definition ................................ 123
Putting the function definition together............................ 124
11.2 Save your time: dolist and dotimes............................... 125 The dolist
Macro.................................................... 125
vi

The dotimes Macro .................................................. 126

11.3 Recursion.......................................................... 127
11.3.1 Building Robots: Extending the Metaphor .................... 127
11.3.2 The Parts of a Recursive Definition ........................... 128 11.3.3
Recursion with a List ......................................... 129
11.3.4 Recursion in Place of a Counter............................... 130
An argument of 3 or 4............................................. 131
11.3.5 Recursion Example Using cond ............................... 132
11.3.6 Recursive Patterns............................................ 133 Recursive Pattern:
every .......................................... 133
Recursive Pattern: accumulate ..................................... 135
Recursive Pattern: keep ........................................... 135
11.3.7 Recursion without Deferments ................................ 136
11.3.8 No Deferment Solution........................................ 137
11.4 Looping Exercise................................................... 139
12 Regular Expression Searches........................... 141
12.1 The Regular Expression for sentence-end ......................... 141
12.2 The re-search-forward Function ................................. 142
12.3 forward-sentence................................................. 143 The while
loops...................................................... 145
The regular expression search ......................................... 146
12.4 forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions ..................... 147 The let*
expression .................................................. 148
The forward motion while loop....................................... 150
12.5 Review ............................................................ 153
12.6 Exercises with re-search-forward ................................ 154

13 Counting via Repetition and Regexps................. 155

13.1 The count-words-example Function............................... 155
13.1.1 The Whitespace Bug in count-words-example................ 158
13.2 Count Words Recursively .......................................... 161
13.3 Exercise: Counting Punctuation.................................... 166

14 Counting Words in a defun............................. 167

14.1 What to Count? ................................................... 167
14.2 What Constitutes a Word or Symbol?.............................. 168
14.3 The count-words-in-defun Function.............................. 169 14.4 Count Several
defuns Within a File................................ 172
14.5 Find a File ........................................................ 173
 vii

14.6 lengths-list-file in Detail ...................................... 174

14.7 Count Words in defuns in Different Files........................... 175
14.7.1 The append Function ......................................... 177
14.8 Recursively Count Words in Different Files ......................... 177
14.9 Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph ........................... 178
14.9.1 Sorting Lists.................................................. 179
14.9.2 Making a List of Files......................................... 179
14.9.3 Counting function definitions.................................. 182

15 Readying a Graph ...................................... 187

15.1 The graph-body-print Function................................... 192
15.2 The recursive-graph-body-print Function....................... 194 15.3 Need for
Printed Axes ............................................. 195
15.4 Exercise ........................................................... 195
16 Your .emacs File......................................... 196
16.1 Site-wide Initialization Files........................................ 196
16.2 Specifying Variables using defcustom .............................. 197 16.3 Beginning a
.emacs File ........................................... 199
16.4 Text and Auto Fill Mode........................................... 200
16.5 Mail Aliases ....................................................... 202 16.6 Indent Tabs Mode
................................................. 202 16.7 Some Key Bindings
................................................ 203
16.8 Keymaps .......................................................... 204
16.9 Loading Files ...................................................... 205 16.10 Autoloading
...................................................... 206 16.11 A Simple Extension: line-to-top-of-
window .................... 207
16.12 X11 Colors ....................................................... 209
16.13 Miscellaneous Settings for a .emacs File........................... 210
16.14 A Modified Mode Line............................................ 212

17 Debugging............................................... 215
17.1 debug.............................................................. 215
17.2 debug-on-entry................................................... 216
17.3 debug-on-quit and (debug)....................................... 218
17.4 The edebug Source Level Debugger ................................ 218
17.5 Debugging Exercises ............................................... 220

18 Conclusion............................................... 221
viii

Appendix A The the-the Function........................ 223

Appendix B Handling the Kill Ring ...................... 225

B.1 The current-kill Function........................................ 225 B.2 yank
............................................................... 230 B.3 yank-pop........................................................... 231
B.4 The ring.el File................................................... 232

Appendix C A Graph with Labeled Axes ................ 233

C.1 The print-graph Varlist ........................................... 234
C.2 The print-Y-axis Function........................................ 234
C.2.1 Side Trip: Compute a Remainder.............................. 235 C.2.2 Construct a Y
Axis Element................................... 237 C.2.3 Create a Y Axis Column
...................................... 239
C.2.4 The Not Quite Final Version of print-Y-axis ................. 240
C.3 The print-X-axis Function........................................ 241
C.3.1 X Axis Tic Marks ............................................. 241
C.4 Printing the Whole Graph.......................................... 245
C.4.1 Testing print-graph.......................................... 247 C.4.2 Graphing Numbers of
Words and Symbols ..................... 248
C.4.3 A lambda Expression: Useful Anonymity....................... 249 C.4.4 The
mapcar Function.......................................... 250 C.4.5 Another Bug . . . Most
Insidious............................... 251
C.4.6 The Printed Graph............................................ 253

Appendix D Free Software and Free Manuals............ 254

Appendix E GNU Free Documentation License ......... 256

Index.......................................................... 265
On Reading this Text 1

Preface
Most of the GNU Emacs integrated environment is written in the programming
language called Emacs Lisp. The code written in this programming language is the
software—the sets of instructions—that tell the computer what to do when you give
it commands. Emacs is designed so that you can write new code in Emacs Lisp and
easily install it as an extension to the editor.
(GNU Emacs is sometimes called an “extensible editor”, but it does much more
than provide editing capabilities. It is better to refer to Emacs as an “extensible
computing environment”. However, that phrase is quite a mouthful. It is easier to
refer to Emacs simply as an editor. Moreover, everything you do in Emacs—find the
Mayan date and phases of the moon, simplify polynomials, debug code, manage files,
read letters, write books—all these activities are kinds of editing in the most general
sense of the word.)
Although Emacs Lisp is usually thought of in association only with Emacs, it is a
full computer programming language. You can use Emacs Lisp as you would any
other programming language.
Perhaps you want to understand programming; perhaps you want to extend
Emacs; or perhaps you want to become a programmer. This introduction to Emacs
Lisp is designed to get you started: to guide you in learning the fundamentals of
programming, and more importantly, to show you how you can teach yourself to go
further.

On Reading this Text

All through this document, you will see little sample programs you can run inside of
Emacs. If you read this document in Info inside of GNU Emacs, you can run the
programs as they appear. (This is easy to do and is explained when the examples are
presented.) Alternatively, you can read this introduction as a printed book while
sitting beside a computer running Emacs. (This is what I like to do; I like printed
books.) If you don’t have a running Emacs beside you, you can still read this book,
but in this case, it is best to treat it as a novel or as a travel guide to a country not yet
visited: interesting, but not the same as being there.
Much of this introduction is dedicated to walkthroughs or guided tours of code
used in GNU Emacs. These tours are designed for two purposes: first, to give you
familiarity with real, working code (code you use every day); and, second, to give you
familiarity with the way Emacs works. It is interesting to see how a working
environment is implemented. Also, I hope that you will pick up the habit of browsing
through source code. You can learn from it and mine it for ideas. Having GNU Emacs
is like having a dragon’s cave of treasures.
In addition to learning about Emacs as an editor and Emacs Lisp as a
programming language, the examples and guided tours will give you an opportunity
to get acquainted with Emacs as a Lisp programming environment. GNU Emacs
supports programming and provides tools that you will want to become comfortable
using, such as M-. (the key which invokes the xref-find-definitions command). You will
also learn about buffers and other objects that are part of the environment. 2
Preface

Learning about these features of Emacs is like learning new routes around your
home town.
Finally, I hope to convey some of the skills for using Emacs to learn aspects of
programming that you don’t know. You can often use Emacs to help you understand
what puzzles you or to find out how to do something new. This self-reliance is not
only a pleasure, but an advantage.

For Whom This is Written

This text is written as an elementary introduction for people who are not
programmers. If you are a programmer, you may not be satisfied with this primer.
The reason is that you may have become expert at reading reference manuals and be
put off by the way this text is organized.
An expert programmer who reviewed this text said to me:
I prefer to learn from reference manuals. I “dive into” each paragraph, and
“come up for air” between paragraphs.
When I get to the end of a paragraph, I assume that subject is done, finished,
that I know everything I need (with the possible exception of the case when
the next paragraph starts talking about it in more detail). I expect that a
well written reference manual will not have a lot of redundancy, and that it
will have excellent pointers to the (one) place where the information I want
is.
This introduction is not written for this person!
Firstly, I try to say everything at least three times: first, to introduce it; second, to
show it in context; and third, to show it in a different context, or to review it.
Secondly, I hardly ever put all the information about a subject in one place, much
less in one paragraph. To my way of thinking, that imposes too heavy a burden on
the reader. Instead I try to explain only what you need to know at the time.
(Sometimes I include a little extra information so you won’t be surprised later when
the additional information is formally introduced.)
When you read this text, you are not expected to learn everything the first time.
Frequently, you need make only a nodding acquaintance with some of the items
mentioned. My hope is that I have structured the text and given you enough hints
that you will be alert to what is important, and concentrate on it.
 You will need to dive into some paragraphs; there is no other way to read them.
But I have tried to keep down the number of such paragraphs. This book is intended
as an approachable hill, rather than as a daunting mountain.
This book, An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, has a companion
document, The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. The reference manual has more
detail than this introduction. In the reference manual, all the information about one
topic is concentrated in one place. You should turn to it if you are like the
programmer quoted above. And, of course, after you have read this Introduction, you
will find the Reference Manual useful when you are writing your own programs.
A Note for Novices 3

Lisp History
Lisp was first developed in the late 1950s at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for research in artificial intelligence. The great power of the Lisp
language makes it superior for other purposes as well, such as writing editor
commands and integrated environments.
GNU Emacs Lisp is largely inspired by Maclisp, which was written at MIT in the
1960s. It is somewhat inspired by Common Lisp, which became a standard in the
1980s. However, Emacs Lisp is much simpler than Common Lisp. (The standard
Emacs distribution contains an optional extensions file, cl-lib.el, that adds many
Common Lisp features to Emacs Lisp.)

A Note for Novices

If you don’t know GNU Emacs, you can still read this document profitably. However, I
recommend you learn Emacs, if only to learn to move around your computer screen.
You can teach yourself how to use Emacs with the built-in tutorial. To use it, type C-
ht. (This means you press and release the CTRL key and the h at the same time, and
then press and release t.)
Also, I often refer to one of Emacs’s standard commands by listing the keys which
you press to invoke the command and then giving the name of the command in
parentheses, like this: M-C-\ (indent-region). What this means is that the indent-
region command is customarily invoked by typing M-C-\. (You can, if you wish,
change the keys that are typed to invoke the command; this is called rebinding. See
Section 16.8 “Keymaps”, page 204.) The abbreviation M-C-\ means that you type your
META key, CTRL key and \ key all at the same time. (On many modern keyboards the
META key is labeled ALT.) Sometimes a combination like this is called a keychord,
since it is similar to the way you play a chord on a piano. If your keyboard does not
have a META key, the ESC key prefix is used in place of it. In this case, M-C-\ means
that you press and release your ESC key and then type the CTRL key and the \ key at
the same time. But usually M-C-\ means press the CTRL key along with the key that is
labeled ALT and, at the same time, press the \ key.
 In addition to typing a lone keychord, you can prefix what you type with C-u,
which is called the universal argument. The C-u keychord passes an argument to the
subsequent command. Thus, to indent a region of plain text by 6 spaces, mark the
region, and then type C-u6M-C-\. (If you do not specify a number, Emacs either
passes the number 4 to the command or otherwise runs the command differently
than it would otherwise.) See Section “Numeric Arguments” in The GNU Emacs
Manual.
If you are reading this in Info using GNU Emacs, you can read through this whole
document just by pressing the space bar, SPC. (To learn about Info, type C-h i and
then select Info.)
A note on terminology: when I use the word Lisp alone, I often am referring to
the various dialects of Lisp in general, but when I speak of Emacs Lisp, I am referring
to GNU Emacs Lisp in particular.
4 Preface

Thank You
My thanks to all who helped me with this book. My especial thanks to Jim Blandy,
Noah Friedman, Jim Kingdon, Roland McGrath, Frank Ritter, Randy Smith, Richard M.
Stallman, and Melissa Weisshaus. My thanks also go to both Philip Johnson and
David Stampe for their patient encouragement. My mistakes are my own.
Robert J. Chassell

bob@gnu.org
 1
Section 1.1: Lisp Lists

1 List Processing
To the untutored eye, Lisp is a strange programming language. In Lisp code there are
parentheses everywhere. Some people even claim that the name stands for “Lots of
Isolated Silly Parentheses”. But the claim is unwarranted. Lisp stands for LISt
Processing, and the programming language handles lists (and lists of lists) by putting
them between parentheses. The parentheses mark the boundaries of the list.
Sometimes a list is preceded by an apostrophe ‘'’, called a single-quote in Lisp.1 Lists
are the basis of Lisp.

1.1 Lisp Lists

In Lisp, a list looks like this: '(rosevioletdaisybuttercup). This list is preceded by a
single apostrophe. It could just as well be written as follows, which looks more like
the kind of list you are likely to be familiar with:
'(rose violet
daisy
buttercup)
The elements of this list are the names of the four different flowers, separated from
each other by whitespace and surrounded by parentheses, like flowers in a field with
a stone wall around them.
Lists can also have numbers in them, as in this list: (+22). This list has a plus-sign,
‘+’, followed by two ‘2’s, each separated by whitespace.
In Lisp, both data and programs are represented the same way; that is, they are
both lists of words, numbers, or other lists, separated by whitespace and surrounded
by parentheses. (Since a program looks like data, one program may easily serve as
data for another; this is a very powerful feature of Lisp.) (Incidentally, these two
parenthetical remarks are not Lisp lists, because they contain ‘;’ and ‘.’ as
punctuation marks.)
Here is another list, this time with a list inside of it:
'(this list has (a list inside of it))
The components of this list are the words ‘this’, ‘list’, ‘has’, and the list ‘(a
listinsideofit)’. The interior list is made up of the words ‘a’, ‘list’, ‘inside’,
‘of’, ‘it’.

1.1.1 Lisp Atoms

In Lisp, what we have been calling words are called atoms. This term comes from the
historical meaning of the word atom, which means “indivisible”. As far as Lisp is

1 A single-quote is an abbreviation for the special form quote; you need not think about
special forms now. See Section 1.5 “Lisp Interpreter”, page 6.
2 Chapter 1: List Processing
concerned, the words we have been using in the lists cannot be divided into any
smaller parts and still mean the same thing as part of a program; likewise with
numbers and single character symbols like ‘+’. On the other hand, unlike an ancient
atom, a list can be split into parts. (See Chapter 7 “carcdr & cons Fundamental
Functions”, page 77.)
In a list, atoms are separated from each other by whitespace. They can be right
next to a parenthesis.
Technically speaking, a list in Lisp consists of parentheses surrounding atoms
separated by whitespace or surrounding other lists or surrounding both atoms and
other lists. A list can have just one atom in it or have nothing in it at all. A list with
nothing in it looks like this: (), and is called the empty list. Unlike anything else, an
empty list is considered both an atom and a list at the same time.
The printed representation of both atoms and lists are called symbolic expressions
or, more concisely, s-expressions. The word expression by itself can refer to either the
printed representation, or to the atom or list as it is held internally in the computer.
Often, people use the term expression indiscriminately. (Also, in many texts, the word
form is used as a synonym for expression.)
Incidentally, the atoms that make up our universe were named such when they
were thought to be indivisible; but it has been found that physical atoms are not
indivisible. Parts can split off an atom or it can fission into two parts of roughly equal
size. Physical atoms were named prematurely, before their truer nature was found.
In Lisp, certain kinds of atom, such as an array, can be separated into parts; but the
mechanism for doing this is different from the mechanism for splitting a list. As far
as list operations are concerned, the atoms of a list are unsplittable.
As in English, the meanings of the component letters of a Lisp atom are different
from the meaning the letters make as a word. For example, the word for the South
American sloth, the ‘ai’, is completely different from the two words, ‘a’, and ‘i’.
There are many kinds of atom in nature but only a few in Lisp: for example,
numbers, such as 37, 511, or 1729, and symbols, such as ‘+’, ‘foo’, or ‘forward-line’. The
words we have listed in the examples above are all symbols. In everyday Lisp
conversation, the word “atom” is not often used, because programmers usually try to
be more specific about what kind of atom they are dealing with. Lisp programming is
mostly about symbols (and sometimes numbers) within lists. (Incidentally, the
preceding three word parenthetical remark is a proper list in Lisp, since it consists of
atoms, which in this case are symbols, separated by whitespace and enclosed by
parentheses, without any non-Lisp punctuation.)
Text between double quotation marks—even sentences or paragraphs—is also
an atom. Here is an example:
'(this list includes "text between quotation marks.")
In Lisp, all of the quoted text including the punctuation mark and the blank spaces is
a single atom. This kind of atom is called a string (for “string of characters”) and is
the sort of thing that is used for messages that a computer can print for a human to
read. Strings are a different kind of atom than numbers or symbols and are used
differently.
 3
1.1.2 Whitespace in Lists
Section 1.2: Run a Program

The amount of whitespace in a list does not matter. From the point of view of the
Lisp language,
'(this list looks like this)
is exactly the same as this:
'(this list looks like this)
Both examples show what to Lisp is the same list, the list made up of the symbols
‘this’, ‘list’, ‘looks’, ‘like’, and ‘this’ in that order.
Extra whitespace and newlines are designed to make a list more readable by
humans. When Lisp reads the expression, it gets rid of all the extra whitespace
(but it needs to have at least one space between atoms in order to tell them apart.)
Odd as it seems, the examples we have seen cover almost all of what Lisp lists
look like! Every other list in Lisp looks more or less like one of these examples,
except that the list may be longer and more complex. In brief, a list is between
parentheses, a string is between quotation marks, a symbol looks like a word, and a
number looks like a number. (For certain situations, square brackets, dots and a few
other special characters may be used; however, we will go quite far without them.)

1.1.3 GNU Emacs Helps You Type Lists

When you type a Lisp expression in GNU Emacs using either Lisp Interaction mode
or Emacs Lisp mode, you have available to you several commands to format the Lisp
expression so it is easy to read. For example, pressing the TAB key automatically
indents the line the cursor is on by the right amount. A command to properly indent
the code in a region is customarily bound to M-C-\. Indentation is designed so that
you can see which elements of a list belong to which list—elements of a sub-list are
indented more than the elements of the enclosing list.
In addition, when you type a closing parenthesis, Emacs momentarily jumps the
cursor back to the matching opening parenthesis, so you can see which one it is. This
is very useful, since every list you type in Lisp must have its closing parenthesis
match its opening parenthesis. (See Section “Major Modes” in The GNU Emacs
Manual, for more information about Emacs’s modes.)

1.2 Run a Program

A list in Lisp—any list—is a program ready to run. If you run it (for which the Lisp
jargon is evaluate), the computer will do one of three things: do nothing except
return to you the list itself; send you an error message; or, treat the first symbol in
the list as a command to do something. (Usually, of course, it is the last of these three
things that you really want!)
The single apostrophe, ', that I put in front of some of the example lists in
preceding sections is called a quote; when it precedes a list, it tells Lisp to do nothing
4 Chapter 1: List Processing
with the list, other than take it as it is written. But if there is no quote preceding a
list, the first item of the list is special: it is a command for the computer to obey. (In
Lisp, these commands are called functions.) The list (+22) shown above did not have
a quote in front of it, so Lisp understands that the + is an instruction to do something
with the rest of the list: add the numbers that follow.
If you are reading this inside of GNU Emacs in Info, here is how you can evaluate
such a list: place your cursor immediately after the right hand parenthesis of the
following list and then type C-xC-e:
(+ 2 2)
You will see the number 4 appear in the echo area2. (What you have just done is
evaluate the list. The echo area is the line at the bottom of the screen that displays or
echoes text.) Now try the same thing with a quoted list: place the cursor right after
the following list and type C-xC-e:
'(this is a quoted list)
You will see (thisisaquotedlist) appear in the echo area.
In both cases, what you are doing is giving a command to the program inside of
GNU Emacs called the Lisp interpreter—giving the interpreter a command to evaluate
the expression. The name of the Lisp interpreter comes from the word for the task
done by a human who comes up with the meaning of an expression—who interprets
it.
You can also evaluate an atom that is not part of a list—one that is not
surrounded by parentheses; again, the Lisp interpreter translates from the humanly
readable expression to the language of the computer. But before discussing this (see
Section 1.7 “Variables”, page 9), we will discuss what the Lisp interpreter does when
you make an error.

1.3 Generate an Error Message

Partly so you won’t worry if you do it accidentally, we will now give a command to
the Lisp interpreter that generates an error message. This is a harmless activity; and
indeed, we will often try to generate error messages intentionally. Once you
understand the jargon, error messages can be informative. Instead of being called
“error” messages, they should be called “help” messages. They are like signposts to a
traveler in a strange country; deciphering them can be hard, but once understood,
they can point the way.
The error message is generated by a built-in GNU Emacs debugger. We will enter
the debugger. You get out of the debugger by typing q.
What we will do is evaluate a list that is not quoted and does not have a
meaningful command as its first element. Here is a list almost exactly the same as

2 Emacs shows integer values in decimal, in octal and in hex, and also as a character, but
let’s ignore this convenience feature for now.
 5
the one we just used, but without the single-quote in front of it. Position the cursor
right after it and type C-xC-e:
(this is an unquoted list)
A *Backtrace* window will open up and you should see the following in it:
Section 1.3: Generate an Error Message

---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------Debugger entered--Lisp

error: (void-function this)
(this is an unquoted list) eval((this is an unquoted list)
nil) elisp--eval-last-sexp(nil) eval-last-sexp(nil) funcall-
interactively(eval-last-sexp nil) call-interactively(eval-
last-sexp nil nil) command-execute(eval-last-sexp)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Your cursor will be in this window (you may have to wait a few seconds before it
becomes visible). To quit the debugger and make the debugger window go away,
type:
q
Please type q right now, so you become confident that you can get out of the
debugger. Then, type C-xC-e again to re-enter it.
Based on what we already know, we can almost read this error message.
You read the *Backtrace* buffer from the bottom up; it tells you what Emacs did.
When you typed C-xC-e, you made an interactive call to the command eval-last-sexp.
eval is an abbreviation for “evaluate” and sexp is an abbreviation for “symbolic
expression”. The command means “evaluate last symbolic expression”, which is the
expression just before your cursor.
Each line above tells you what the Lisp interpreter evaluated next. The most
recent action is at the top. The buffer is called the *Backtrace* buffer because it
enables you to track Emacs backwards.
At the top of the *Backtrace* buffer, you see the line:
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function this)
The Lisp interpreter tried to evaluate the first atom of the list, the word ‘this’. It is
this action that generated the error message ‘void-functionthis’.
The message contains the words ‘void-function’ and ‘this’.
The word ‘function’ was mentioned once before. It is a very important word. For
our purposes, we can define it by saying that a function is a set of instructions to the
computer that tell the computer to do something.
Now we can begin to understand the error message: ‘void-functionthis’. The
function (that is, the word ‘this’) does not have a definition of any set of instructions
for the computer to carry out.
The slightly odd word, ‘void-function’, is designed to cover the way Emacs Lisp is
implemented, which is that when a symbol does not have a function definition
attached to it, the place that should contain the instructions is void.
6 Chapter 1: List Processing
On the other hand, since we were able to add 2 plus 2 successfully, by evaluating
(+22), we can infer that the symbol + must have a set of instructions for the computer
to obey and those instructions must be to add the numbers that follow the +.
It is possible to prevent Emacs entering the debugger in cases like this. We do not
explain how to do that here, but we will mention what the result looks like, because
you may encounter a similar situation if there is a bug in some Emacs code that you
are using. In such cases, you will see only one line of error message; it will appear in
the echo area and look like this:
Symbol's function definition is void: this
The message goes away as soon as you type a key, even just to move the cursor.
We know the meaning of the word ‘Symbol’. It refers to the first atom of the list,
the word ‘this’. The word ‘function’ refers to the instructions that tell the computer
what to do. (Technically, the symbol tells the computer where to find the
instructions, but this is a complication we can ignore for the moment.)
The error message can be understood: ‘Symbol'sfunctiondefinitionis void:this’. The
symbol (that is, the word ‘this’) lacks instructions for the computer to carry out.

1.4 Symbol Names and Function Definitions

We can articulate another characteristic of Lisp based on what we have discussed so
far—an important characteristic: a symbol, like +, is not itself the set of instructions
for the computer to carry out. Instead, the symbol is used, perhaps temporarily, as a
way of locating the definition or set of instructions. What we see is the name through
which the instructions can be found. Names of people work the same way. I can be
referred to as ‘Bob’; however, I am not the letters ‘B’, ‘o’, ‘b’ but am, or was, the
consciousness consistently associated with a particular life-form. The name is not
me, but it can be used to refer to me.
In Lisp, one set of instructions can be attached to several names. For example, the
computer instructions for adding numbers can be linked to the symbol plus as well
as to the symbol + (and are in some dialects of Lisp). Among humans, I can be
referred to as ‘Robert’ as well as ‘Bob’ and by other words as well.
On the other hand, a symbol can have only one function definition attached to it
at a time. Otherwise, the computer would be confused as to which definition to use.
If this were the case among people, only one person in the world could be named
‘Bob’. However, the function definition to which the name refers can be changed
readily. (See Section 3.2 “Install a Function Definition”, page 28.)
Since Emacs Lisp is large, it is customary to name symbols in a way that identifies
the part of Emacs to which the function belongs. Thus, all the names for functions
that deal with Texinfo start with ‘texinfo-’ and those for functions that deal with
reading mail start with ‘rmail-’.
 7
1.5 The Lisp Interpreter
Based on what we have seen, we can now start to figure out what the Lisp
interpreter does when we command it to evaluate a list. First, it looks to see whether
there is a quote before the list; if there is, the interpreter just gives us the list. On the
other hand, if there is no quote, the interpreter looks at the first element in the list
and sees whether it has a function definition. If it does, the interpreter carries out
the instructions in the function definition. Otherwise, the interpreter prints an error
message.
Section 1.5: The Lisp Interpreter

This is how Lisp works. Simple. There are added complications which we will get
to in a minute, but these are the fundamentals. Of course, to write Lisp programs,
you need to know how to write function definitions and attach them to names, and
how to do this without confusing either yourself or the computer.
Now, for the first complication. In addition to lists, the Lisp interpreter can
evaluate a symbol that is not quoted and does not have parentheses around it. The
Lisp interpreter will attempt to determine the symbol’s value as a variable. This
situation is described in the section on variables. (See Section 1.7 “Variables”, page
9.)
The second complication occurs because some functions are unusual and do not
work in the usual manner. Those that don’t are called special forms. They are used for
special jobs, like defining a function, and there are not many of them. In the next few
chapters, you will be introduced to several of the more important special forms.
As well as special forms, there are also macros. A macro is a construct defined in
Lisp, which differs from a function in that it translates a Lisp expression into another
expression that is to be evaluated in place of the original expression. (See Section
8.2.2 “Lisp macro”, page 93.)
For the purposes of this introduction, you do not need to worry too much about
whether something is a special form, macro, or ordinary function. For example, if is a
special form (see Section 3.7 “if”, page 37), but when is a macro (see Section 8.2.2
“Lisp macro”, page 93). In earlier versions of Emacs, defun was a special form, but
now it is a macro (see Section 3.1 “defun”, page 26). It still behaves in the same way.
The final complication is this: if the function that the Lisp interpreter is looking at
is not a special form, and if it is part of a list, the Lisp interpreter looks to see
whether the list has a list inside of it. If there is an inner list, the Lisp interpreter first
figures out what it should do with the inside list, and then it works on the outside
list. If there is yet another list embedded inside the inner list, it works on that one
first, and so on. It always works on the innermost list first. The interpreter works on
the innermost list first, to evaluate the result of that list. The result may be used by
the enclosing expression.
Otherwise, the interpreter works left to right, from one expression to the next.
8 Chapter 1: List Processing
1.5.1 Byte Compiling
One other aspect of interpreting: the Lisp interpreter is able to interpret two kinds
of entity: humanly readable code, on which we will focus exclusively, and specially
processed code, called byte compiled code, which is not humanly readable. Byte
compiled code runs faster than humanly readable code.
You can transform humanly readable code into byte compiled code by running
one of the compile commands such as byte-compile-file. Byte compiled code is
usually stored in a file that ends with a .elc extension rather than a .el extension. You
will see both kinds of file in the emacs/lisp directory; the files to read are those with
.el extensions.
As a practical matter, for most things you might do to customize or extend Emacs,
you do not need to byte compile; and I will not discuss the topic here. See Section
“Byte Compilation” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for a full description of
byte compilation.

1.6 Evaluation
When the Lisp interpreter works on an expression, the term for the activity is called
evaluation. We say that the interpreter “evaluates the expression”. I’ve used this term
several times before. The word comes from its use in everyday language, “to
ascertain the value or amount of; to appraise”, according to Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary.
After evaluating an expression, the Lisp interpreter will most likely return the
value that the computer produces by carrying out the instructions it found in the
function definition, or perhaps it will give up on that function and produce an error
message. (The interpreter may also find itself tossed, so to speak, to a different
function or it may attempt to repeat continually what it is doing for ever and ever in
an infinite loop. These actions are less common; and we can ignore them.) Most
frequently, the interpreter returns a value.
At the same time the interpreter returns a value, it may do something else as
well, such as move a cursor or copy a file; this other kind of action is called a side
effect. Actions that we humans think are important, such as printing results, are
often side effects to the Lisp interpreter. It is fairly easy to learn to use side effects.
In summary, evaluating a symbolic expression most commonly causes the Lisp
interpreter to return a value and perhaps carry out a side effect; or else produce an
error.

1.6.1 Evaluating Inner Lists

If evaluation applies to a list that is inside another list, the outer list may use the
value returned by the first evaluation as information when the outer list is evaluated.
This explains why inner expressions are evaluated first: the values they return are
used by the outer expressions.
Section 1.7: Variables
 9
We can investigate this process by evaluating another addition example. Place
your cursor after the following expression and type C-xC-e:
(+ 2 (+ 3 3))
The number 8 will appear in the echo area.
What happens is that the Lisp interpreter first evaluates the inner expression,
(+33), for which the value 6 is returned; then it evaluates the outer expression as if it
were written (+26), which returns the value 8. Since there are no more enclosing
expressions to evaluate, the interpreter prints that value in the echo area.
Now it is easy to understand the name of the command invoked by the
keystrokes C-xC-e: the name is eval-last-sexp. The letters sexp are an abbreviation for
“symbolic expression”, and eval is an abbreviation for “evaluate”. The command
evaluates the last symbolic expression.
As an experiment, you can try evaluating the expression by putting the cursor at
the beginning of the next line immediately following the expression, or inside the
expression.
Here is another copy of the expression:
(+ 2 (+ 3 3))
If you place the cursor at the beginning of the blank line that immediately follows
the expression and type C-xC-e, you will still get the value 8 printed in the echo area.
Now try putting the cursor inside the expression. If you put it right after the next to
last parenthesis (so it appears to sit on top of the last parenthesis), you will get a 6
printed in the echo area! This is because the command evaluates the expression
(+33).
Now put the cursor immediately after a number. Type C-xC-e and you will get the
number itself. In Lisp, if you evaluate a number, you get the number itself—this is
how numbers differ from symbols. If you evaluate a list starting with a symbol like +,
you will get a value returned that is the result of the computer carrying out the
instructions in the function definition attached to that name. If a symbol by itself is
evaluated, something different happens, as we will see in the next section.

1.7 Variables
In Emacs Lisp, a symbol can have a value attached to it just as it can have a function
definition attached to it. The two are different. The function definition is a set of
instructions that a computer will obey. A value, on the other hand, is something, such
as number or a name, that can vary (which is why such a symbol is called a variable).
The value of a symbol can be any expression in Lisp, such as a symbol, number, list,
or string. A symbol that has a value is often called a variable.
A symbol can have both a function definition and a value attached to it at the
same time. Or it can have just one or the other. The two are separate. This is
somewhat similar to the way the name Cambridge can refer to the city in
Massachusetts and have some information attached to the name as well, such as
“great programming center”.
10 Chapter 1: List Processing
Another way to think about this is to imagine a symbol as being a chest of
drawers. The function definition is put in one drawer, the value in another, and so on.
What is put in the drawer holding the value can be changed without affecting the
contents of the drawer holding the function definition, and vice versa.
The variable fill-column illustrates a symbol with a value attached to it: in every
GNU Emacs buffer, this symbol is set to some value, usually 72 or 70, but sometimes
to some other value. To find the value of this symbol, evaluate it by itself. If you are
reading this in Info inside of GNU Emacs, you can do this by putting the cursor after
the symbol and typing C-xC-e:
fill-column
After I typed C-xC-e, Emacs printed the number 72 in my echo area. This is the value
for which fill-column is set for me as I write this. It may be different for you in your
Info buffer. Notice that the value returned as a variable is printed in exactly the same
way as the value returned by a function carrying out its instructions. From the point
of view of the Lisp interpreter, a value returned is a value returned. What kind of
expression it came from ceases to matter once the value is known.
A symbol can have any value attached to it or, to use the jargon, we can bind the
variable to a value: to a number, such as 72; to a string, "suchasthis"; to a list, such as
(sprucepineoak); we can even bind a variable to a function definition.
A symbol can be bound to a value in several ways. See Section 1.9 “Setting the
Value of a Variable”, page 16, for information about one way to do this.

1.7.1 Error Message for a Symbol Without a Function

When we evaluated fill-column to find its value as a variable, we did not place
parentheses around the word. This is because we did not intend to use it as a
function name.
If fill-column were the first or only element of a list, the Lisp interpreter would
attempt to find the function definition attached to it. But fill-column has no function
definition. Try evaluating this:
(fill-column)
You will create a *Backtrace* buffer that says:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function fill-column)
(fill-column) eval((fill-column) nil) elisp--eval-last-
sexp(nil) eval-last-sexp(nil) funcall-interactively(eval-
last-sexp nil) call-interactively(eval-last-sexp nil nil)
command-execute(eval-last-sexp)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
(Remember, to quit the debugger and make the debugger window go away, type q in
the *Backtrace* buffer.)
 11
1.7.2 Error Message for a Symbol Without a Value
If you attempt to evaluate a symbol that does not have a value bound to it, you will
receive an error message. You can see this by experimenting with our 2 plus 2
12 Chapter 1: List Processing

addition. In the following expression, put your cursor right after the +, before the
first number 2, type C-xC-e:
(+ 2 2)
In GNU Emacs 22, you will create a *Backtrace* buffer that says:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable +) eval(+) elisp--
eval-last-sexp(nil) eval-last-sexp(nil) funcall-
interactively(eval-last-sexp nil) call-interactively(eval-last-
sexp nil nil) command-execute(eval-last-sexp)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
(Again, you can quit the debugger by typing q in the *Backtrace* buffer.)
This backtrace is different from the very first error message we saw, which said,
‘Debuggerentered--Lisperror:(void-functionthis)’. In this case, the function does not
have a value as a variable; while in the other error message, the function (the word
‘this’) did not have a definition.
In this experiment with the +, what we did was cause the Lisp interpreter to
evaluate the + and look for the value of the variable instead of the function definition.
We did this by placing the cursor right after the symbol rather than after the
parenthesis of the enclosing list as we did before. As a consequence, the Lisp
interpreter evaluated the preceding s-expression, which in this case was + by itself.
Since + does not have a value bound to it, just the function definition, the error
message reported that the symbol’s value as a variable was void.

1.8 Arguments
To see how information is passed to functions, let’s look again at our old standby, the
addition of two plus two. In Lisp, this is written as follows:
(+ 2 2)
If you evaluate this expression, the number 4 will appear in your echo area. What
the Lisp interpreter does is add the numbers that follow the +.
The numbers added by + are called the arguments of the function +. These
numbers are the information that is given to or passed to the function.
The word “argument” comes from the way it is used in mathematics and does not
refer to a disputation between two people; instead it refers to the information
presented to the function, in this case, to the +. In Lisp, the arguments to a function
are the atoms or lists that follow the function. The values returned by the evaluation
of these atoms or lists are passed to the function. Different functions require
different numbers of arguments; some functions require none at all.3

3 It is curious to track the path by which the word “argument” came to have two
different meanings, one in mathematics and the other in everyday English. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the word derives from the Latin for ‘tomakeclear, prove’; thus it
came to mean, by one thread of derivation, “the evidence offered as proof”, which is to say,
Section 1.8: Arguments 13

1.8.1 Arguments’ Data Types

The type of data that should be passed to a function depends on what kind of
information it uses. The arguments to a function such as + must have values that are
numbers, since + adds numbers. Other functions use different kinds of data for their
arguments.
For example, the concat function links together or unites two or more strings of
text to produce a string. The arguments are strings. Concatenating the two character
strings abc, def produces the single string abcdef. This can be seen by evaluating the
following:
(concat "abc" "def")
The value produced by evaluating this expression is "abcdef".
A function such as substring uses both a string and numbers as arguments. The
function returns a part of the string, a substring of the first argument. This function
takes three arguments. Its first argument is the string of characters, the second and
third arguments are numbers that indicate the beginning (inclusive) and end
(exclusive) of the substring. The numbers are a count of the number of characters
(including spaces and punctuation) from the beginning of the string. Note that the
characters in a string are numbered from zero, not one.
For example, if you evaluate the following:
(substring "The quick brown fox jumped." 16 19) you will see "fox" appear in the echo
area. The arguments are the string and the two numbers.
Note that the string passed to substring is a single atom even though it is made up
of several words separated by spaces. Lisp counts everything between the two
quotation marks as part of the string, including the spaces. You can think of the
substring function as a kind of atom smasher since it takes an otherwise indivisible
atom and extracts a part. However, substring is only able to extract a substring from
an argument that is a string, not from another type of atom such as a number or
symbol.

1.8.2 An Argument as the Value of a Variable or List

An argument can be a symbol that returns a value when it is evaluated. For example,
when the symbol fill-column by itself is evaluated, it returns a number. This number
can be used in an addition.

“the information offered”, which led to its meaning in Lisp.

14 Chapter 1: List Processing

But in the other thread of derivation, it came to mean “to assert in a manner against which
others may make counter assertions”, which led to the meaning of the word as a
disputation. (Note here that the English word has two different definitions attached to it
at the same time. By contrast, in Emacs Lisp, a symbol cannot have two different function
definitions at the same time.)
Position the cursor after the following expression and type C-xC-e:
(+ 2 fill-column)
The value will be a number two more than what you get by evaluating fill-column
alone. For me, this is 74, because my value of fill-column is 72.
As we have just seen, an argument can be a symbol that returns a value when
evaluated. In addition, an argument can be a list that returns a value when it is
evaluated. For example, in the following expression, the arguments to the function
concat are the strings "The" and "redfoxes." and the list (number-to-string (+2fill-
column)).
(concat "The " (number-to-string (+ 2 fill-column)) " red foxes.")
If you evaluate this expression—and if, as with my Emacs, fill-column evaluates to 72
—"The74redfoxes." will appear in the echo area. (Note that you must put spaces after
the word ‘The’ and before the word ‘red’ so they will appear in the final string. The
function number-to-string converts the integer that the addition function returns to a
string. number-to-string is also known as int-to-string.)

1.8.3 Variable Number of Arguments

Some functions, such as concat, + or *, take any number of arguments. (The * is the
symbol for multiplication.) This can be seen by evaluating each of the following
expressions in the usual way. What you will see in the echo area is printed in this
text after ‘⇒’, which you may read as “evaluates to”.
In the first set, the functions have no arguments:
(+) ⇒0

(*) ⇒1
In this set, the functions have one argument each:
(+ 3) ⇒3

(* 3) ⇒3
In this set, the functions have three arguments each:
(+ 3 4 5) ⇒ 12

(* 3 4 5) ⇒ 60

1.8.4 Using the Wrong Type Object as an Argument

When a function is passed an argument of the wrong type, the Lisp interpreter
produces an error message. For example, the + function expects the values of its
Section 1.8: Arguments 15

arguments to be numbers. As an experiment we can pass it the quoted symbol hello

instead of a number. Position the cursor after the following expression and type C-
xC-e:
(+ 2 'hello)
When you do this you will generate an error message. What has happened is that +
has tried to add the 2 to the value returned by 'hello, but the value returned by 'hello
is the symbol hello, not a number. Only numbers can be added. So + could not carry
out its addition.
You will create and enter a *Backtrace* buffer that says:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------Debugger entered--Lisp
error:
(wrong-type-argument number-or-marker-p hello)
+(2 hello) eval((+ 2 'hello) nil) elisp--eval-last-sexp(t) eval-last-
sexp(nil) funcall-interactively(eval-print-last-sexp nil) call-
interactively(eval-print-last-sexp nil nil) command-
execute(eval-print-last-sexp)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
As usual, the error message tries to be helpful and makes sense after you learn
how to read it.4
The first part of the error message is straightforward; it says ‘wrongtype
argument’. Next comes the mysterious jargon word ‘number-or-marker-p’. This word is
trying to tell you what kind of argument the + expected.
The symbol number-or-marker-p says that the Lisp interpreter is trying to
determine whether the information presented it (the value of the argument) is a
number or a marker (a special object representing a buffer position). What it does is
test to see whether the + is being given numbers to add. It also tests to see whether
the argument is something called a marker, which is a specific feature of Emacs Lisp.
(In Emacs, locations in a buffer are recorded as markers. When the mark is set with
the C-@ or C-SPC command, its position is kept as a marker. The mark can be
considered a number—the number of characters the location is from the beginning
of the buffer.) In Emacs Lisp, + can be used to add the numeric value of marker
positions as numbers.
The ‘p’ of number-or-marker-p is the embodiment of a practice started in the early
days of Lisp programming. The ‘p’ stands for predicate. In the jargon used by the
early Lisp researchers, a predicate refers to a function to determine whether some
property is true or false. So the ‘p’ tells us that number-or-marker-p is the name of a
function that determines whether it is true or false that the argument supplied is a
number or a marker. Other Lisp symbols that end in ‘p’ include zerop, a function that
tests whether its argument has the value of zero, and listp, a function that tests
whether its argument is a list.

4 (quotehello) is an expansion of the abbreviation 'hello.

16 Chapter 1: List Processing

Finally, the last part of the error message is the symbol hello. This is the value of
the argument that was passed to +. If the addition had been passed the correct type
of object, the value passed would have been a number, such as 37, rather than a
symbol like hello. But then you would not have got the error message.

1.8.5 The message Function

Like +, the message function takes a variable number of arguments. It is used to send
messages to the user and is so useful that we will describe it here.
A message is printed in the echo area. For example, you can print a message in
your echo area by evaluating the following list:
(message "This message appears in the echo area!")
The whole string between double quotation marks is a single argument and is
printed in toto. (Note that in this example, the message itself will appear in the echo
area within double quotes; that is because you see the value returned by the message
function. In most uses of message in programs that you write, the text will be printed
in the echo area as a side-effect, without the quotes. See Section 3.3.1 “multiply-by-
seven in detail”, page 30, for an example of this.)
However, if there is a ‘%s’ in the quoted string of characters, the message function
does not print the ‘%s’ as such, but looks to the argument that follows the string. It
evaluates the second argument and prints the value at the location in the string
where the ‘%s’ is.
You can see this by positioning the cursor after the following expression and
typing C-xC-e:
(message "The name of this buffer is: %s." (buffer-name))
In Info, "Thenameofthisbufferis:*info*." will appear in the echo area. The function
buffer-name returns the name of the buffer as a string, which the message function
inserts in place of %s.
To print a value as an integer, use ‘%d’ in the same way as ‘%s’. For example, to
print a message in the echo area that states the value of the fill-column, evaluate the
following:
(message "The value of fill-column is %d." fill-column)
On my system, when I evaluate this list, "Thevalueoffill-columnis72." appears in my
echo area5.
If there is more than one ‘%s’ in the quoted string, the value of the first argument
following the quoted string is printed at the location of the first ‘%s’ and the value of
the second argument is printed at the location of the second ‘%s’, and so on.
For example, if you evaluate the following,
(message "There are %d %s in the office!"
(- fill-column 14) "pink elephants")

5 Actually, you can use %s to print a number. It is non-specific. %d prints only the part of
a number left of a decimal point, and not anything that is not a number.
Section 1.8: Arguments 17

a rather whimsical message will appear in your echo area. On my system it says,
"Thereare58pinkelephantsintheoffice!".
The expression (-fill-column14) is evaluated and the resulting number is inserted
in place of the ‘%d’; and the string in double quotes, "pinkelephants", is treated as a
single argument and inserted in place of the ‘%s’. (That is to say, a string between
double quotes evaluates to itself, like a number.)
Finally, here is a somewhat complex example that not only illustrates the
computation of a number, but also shows how you can use an expression within an
expression to generate the text that is substituted for ‘%s’:
(message "He saw %d %s"
(- fill-column 32) (concat "red "
(substring
"The quick brown foxes jumped." 16 21)
" leaping."))
In this example, message has three arguments: the string, "Hesaw%d%s", the
expression, (-fill-column32), and the expression beginning with the function concat.
The value resulting from the evaluation of (-fill-column32) is inserted in place of the
‘%d’; and the value returned by the expression beginning with concat is inserted in
place of the ‘%s’.
When your fill column is 70 and you evaluate the expression, the message "He
saw38redfoxesleaping." appears in your echo area.

1.9 Setting the Value of a Variable

There are several ways by which a variable can be given a value. One of the ways is to
use the special form setq. Another way is to use let (see Section 3.6 “let”, page 33).
(The jargon for this process is to bind a variable to a value.)
The following sections not only describe how setq works but also illustrate how
arguments are passed.

1.9.1 Using setq

To set the value of the symbol flowers to the list (rosevioletdaisybuttercup), evaluate
the following expression by positioning the cursor after the expression and typing C-
xC-e.
(setq flowers '(rose violet daisy buttercup))
The list (rosevioletdaisybuttercup) will appear in the echo area. This is what is
returned by the setq special form. As a side effect, the symbol flowers is bound to the
list; that is, the symbol flowers, which can be viewed as a variable, is given the list as
its value. (This process, by the way, illustrates how a side effect to the Lisp
interpreter, setting the value, can be the primary effect that we humans are
interested in. This is because every Lisp function must return a value if it does not
get an error, but it will only have a side effect if it is designed to have one.)
18 Chapter 1: List Processing
Section 1.9: Setting the Value of a Variable

After evaluating the setq expression, you can evaluate the symbol flowers and it
will return the value you just set. Here is the symbol. Place your cursor after it and
type C-xC-e.
flowers
When you evaluate flowers, the list (rosevioletdaisybuttercup) appears in the echo
area.
Incidentally, if you evaluate 'flowers, the variable with a quote in front of it, what
you will see in the echo area is the symbol itself, flowers. Here is the quoted symbol,
so you can try this:
'flowers
Also, as an added convenience, setq permits you to set several different variables
to different values, all in one expression.
To set the value of the variable carnivores to the list '(liontigerleopard) using setq,
the following expression is used:
(setq carnivores '(lion tiger leopard))
Also, setq can be used to assign different values to different variables. The first
argument is bound to the value of the second argument, the third argument is bound
to the value of the fourth argument, and so on. For example, you could use the
following to assign a list of trees to the symbol trees and a list of herbivores to the
symbol herbivores:
(setq trees '(pine fir oak maple) herbivores '(gazelle
antelope zebra))
(The expression could just as well have been on one line, but it might not have fit on
a page; and humans find it easier to read nicely formatted lists.)
Although I have been using the term “assign”, there is another way of thinking
about the workings of setq; and that is to say that setq makes the symbol point to the
list. This latter way of thinking is very common and in forthcoming chapters we shall
come upon at least one symbol that has “pointer” as part of its name. The name is
chosen because the symbol has a value, specifically a list, attached to it; or, expressed
another way, the symbol is set to point to the list.

1.9.2 Counting
Here is an example that shows how to use setq in a counter. You might use this to
count how many times a part of your program repeats itself. First set a variable to
zero; then add one to the number each time the program repeats itself. To do this,
you need a variable that serves as a counter, and two expressions: an initial setq
expression that sets the counter variable to zero; and a second setq expression that
increments the counter each time it is evaluated.
(setq counter 0) ; Let’s call this the initializer.
 19
(setq counter (+ counter 1)) ; This is the incrementer.

counter ; This is the counter.

(The text following the ‘;’ are comments. See Section 3.2.1 “Change a Function
Definition”, page 29.)
If you evaluate the first of these expressions, the initializer, (setqcounter0), and
then evaluate the third expression, counter, the number 0 will appear in the echo
area. If you then evaluate the second expression, the incrementer, (setq
counter(+counter1)), the counter will get the value 1. So if you again evaluate counter,
the number 1 will appear in the echo area. Each time you evaluate the second
expression, the value of the counter will be incremented.
When you evaluate the incrementer, (setqcounter(+counter1)), the Lisp interpreter
first evaluates the innermost list; this is the addition. In order to evaluate this list, it
must evaluate the variable counter and the number 1. When it evaluates the variable
counter, it receives its current value. It passes this value and the number 1 to the +
which adds them together. The sum is then returned as the value of the inner list and
passed to the setq which sets the variable counter to this new value. Thus, the value
of the variable, counter, is changed.

1.10 Summary
Learning Lisp is like climbing a hill in which the first part is the steepest. You have
now climbed the most difficult part; what remains becomes easier as you progress
onwards.
In summary,
• Lisp programs are made up of expressions, which are lists or single atoms.
• Lists are made up of zero or more atoms or inner lists, separated by whitespace
and surrounded by parentheses. A list can be empty.
• Atoms are multi-character symbols, like forward-paragraph, single character
symbols like +, strings of characters between double quotation marks, or
numbers.
• A number evaluates to itself.
• A string between double quotes also evaluates to itself.
• When you evaluate a symbol by itself, its value is returned.
• When you evaluate a list, the Lisp interpreter looks at the first symbol in the list
and then at the function definition bound to that symbol. Then the instructions
in the function definition are carried out.
• A single-quote ‘'’ tells the Lisp interpreter that it should return the following
expression as written, and not evaluate it as it would if the quote were not
there.
20 Chapter 1: List Processing
• Arguments are the information passed to a function. The arguments to a
function are computed by evaluating the rest of the elements of the list of
which the function is the first element.
• A function always returns a value when it is evaluated (unless it gets an error);
in addition, it may also carry out some action that is a side effect. In many
cases, a function’s primary purpose is to create a side effect.
Section 1.11: Exercises

1.11 Exercises
A few simple exercises:
• Generate an error message by evaluating an appropriate symbol that is not
within parentheses.
• Generate an error message by evaluating an appropriate symbol that is
between parentheses.
• Create a counter that increments by two rather than one.
• Write an expression that prints a message in the echo area when evaluated.
 21
2 Practicing Evaluation
Before learning how to write a function definition in Emacs Lisp, it is useful to spend
a little time evaluating various expressions that have already been written. These
expressions will be lists with the functions as their first (and often only) element.
Since some of the functions associated with buffers are both simple and interesting,
we will start with those. In this section, we will evaluate a few of these. In another
section, we will study the code of several other buffer-related functions, to see how
they were written.
Whenever you give an editing command to Emacs Lisp, such as the command to
move the cursor or to scroll the screen, you are evaluating an expression, the first
element of which is a function. This is how Emacs works.
When you type keys, you cause the Lisp interpreter to evaluate an expression and
that is how you get your results. Even typing plain text involves evaluating an Emacs
Lisp function, in this case, one that uses self-insert-command, which simply inserts
the character you typed. The functions you evaluate by typing keystrokes are called
interactive functions, or commands; how you make a function interactive will be
illustrated in the chapter on how to write function definitions. See Section 3.3
“Making a Function Interactive”, page 29.
In addition to typing keyboard commands, we have seen a second way to
evaluate an expression: by positioning the cursor after a list and typing C-xC-e. This
is what we will do in the rest of this section. There are other ways to evaluate an
expression as well; these will be described as we come to them.
Besides being used for practicing evaluation, the functions shown in the next few
sections are important in their own right. A study of these functions makes clear the
distinction between buffers and files, how to switch to a buffer, and how to
determine a location within it.

2.1 Buffer Names

The two functions, buffer-name and buffer-file-name, show the difference between a
file and a buffer. When you evaluate the following expression, (buffer-name), the
name of the buffer appears in the echo area. When you evaluate (buffer-file-name),
the name of the file to which the buffer refers appears in the echo area. Usually, the
name returned by (buffer-name) is the same as the name of the file to which it refers,
and the name returned by (buffer-file-name) is the full path-name of the file.
A file and a buffer are two different entities. A file is information recorded
permanently in the computer (unless you delete it). A buffer, on the other hand, is
information inside of Emacs that will vanish at the end of the editing session (or
when you kill the buffer). Usually, a buffer contains information that you have copied
from a file; we say the buffer is visiting that file. This copy is what you work on and
modify. Changes to the buffer do not change the file, until you save the buffer. When
you save the buffer, the buffer is copied to the file and is thus saved permanently.
Section 2.1: Buffer Names
22 Chapter 2: Practicing Evaluation
If you are reading this in Info inside of GNU Emacs, you can evaluate each of the
following expressions by positioning the cursor after it and typing C-xC-e.
(buffer-name)

(buffer-file-name)
When I do this in Info, the value returned by evaluating (buffer-name) is "*info*", and
the value returned by evaluating (buffer-file-name) is nil.
On the other hand, while I am writing this document, the value returned by
evaluating (buffer-name) is "introduction.texinfo", and the value returned by
evaluating (buffer-file-name) is "/gnu/work/intro/introduction.texinfo".
The former is the name of the buffer and the latter is the name of the file. In Info,
the buffer name is "*info*". Info does not point to any file, so the result of evaluating
(buffer-file-name) is nil. The symbol nil is from the Latin word for “nothing”; in this
case, it means that the buffer is not associated with any file.
(In Lisp, nil is also used to mean “false” and is a synonym for the empty list, ().)
When I am writing, the name of my buffer is "introduction.texinfo". The name of
the file to which it points is "/gnu/work/intro/introduction.texinfo".
(In the expressions, the parentheses tell the Lisp interpreter to treat buffer-name
and buffer-file-name as functions; without the parentheses, the interpreter would
attempt to evaluate the symbols as variables. See Section 1.7 “Variables”, page 9.)
In spite of the distinction between files and buffers, you will often find that
people refer to a file when they mean a buffer and vice versa. Indeed, most people
say, “I am editing a file,” rather than saying, “I am editing a buffer which I will soon
save to a file.” It is almost always clear from context what people mean. When
dealing with computer programs, however, it is important to keep the distinction in
mind, since the computer is not as smart as a person.
The word “buffer”, by the way, comes from the meaning of the word as a cushion
that deadens the force of a collision. In early computers, a buffer cushioned the
interaction between files and the computer’s central processing unit. The drums or
tapes that held a file and the central processing unit were pieces of equipment that
were very different from each other, working at their own speeds, in spurts. The
buffer made it possible for them to work together effectively. Eventually, the buffer
grew from being an intermediary, a temporary holding place, to being the place
where work is done. This transformation is rather like that of a small seaport that
grew into a great city: once it was merely the place where cargo was warehoused
temporarily before being loaded onto ships; then it became a business and cultural
center in its own right.
Not all buffers are associated with files. For example, a *scratch* buffer does not
visit any file. Similarly, a *Help* buffer is not associated with any file.
In the old days, when you lacked a ~/.emacs file and started an Emacs session by
typing the command emacs alone, without naming any files, Emacs started with the
*scratch* buffer visible. Nowadays, you will see a splash screen. You can follow one
 23
of the commands suggested on the splash screen, visit a file, or press q to quit the
splash screen and reach the *scratch* buffer.
If you switch to the *scratch* buffer, type (buffer-name), position the cursor after
it, and then type C-xC-e to evaluate the expression. The name "*scratch*" will be
returned and will appear in the echo area. "*scratch*" is the name of the buffer.
When you type (buffer-file-name) in the *scratch* buffer and evaluate that, nil will
appear in the echo area, just as it does when you evaluate (buffer-file-name) in Info.
Incidentally, if you are in the *scratch* buffer and want the value returned by an
expression to appear in the *scratch* buffer itself rather than in the echo area, type
C-uC-xC-e instead of C-xC-e. This causes the value returned to appear after the
expression. The buffer will look like this:
(buffer-name)"*scratch*"
You cannot do this in Info since Info is read-only and it will not allow you to change
the contents of the buffer. But you can do this in any buffer you can edit; and when
you write code or documentation (such as this book), this feature is very useful.

2.2 Getting Buffers

The buffer-name function returns the name of the buffer; to get the buffer itself, a
different function is needed: the current-buffer function. If you use this function in
code, what you get is the buffer itself.
A name and the object or entity to which the name refers are different from each
other. You are not your name. You are a person to whom others refer by name. If you
ask to speak to George and someone hands you a card with the letters ‘G’, ‘e’, ‘o’, ‘r’, ‘g’,
and ‘e’ written on it, you might be amused, but you would not be satisfied. You do not
want to speak to the name, but to the person to whom the name refers. A buffer is
similar: the name of the scratch buffer is *scratch*, but the name is not the buffer. To
get a buffer itself, you need to use a function such as current-buffer.
However, there is a slight complication: if you evaluate current-buffer in an
expression on its own, as we will do here, what you see is a printed representation of
the name of the buffer without the contents of the buffer. Emacs works this way for
two reasons: the buffer may be thousands of lines long—too long to be conveniently
displayed; and, another buffer may have the same contents but a different name, and
it is important to distinguish between them.
Section 2.3: Switching Buffers

Here is an expression containing the function:

(current-buffer)
If you evaluate this expression in Info in Emacs in the usual way, #<buffer*info*> will
appear in the echo area. The special format indicates that the buffer itself is being
returned, rather than just its name.
24 Chapter 2: Practicing Evaluation
Incidentally, while you can type a number or symbol into a program, you cannot
do that with the printed representation of a buffer: the only way to get a buffer itself
is with a function such as current-buffer.
A related function is other-buffer. This returns the most recently selected buffer
other than the one you are in currently, not a printed representation of its name. If
you have recently switched back and forth from the *scratch* buffer, other-buffer will
return that buffer.
You can see this by evaluating the expression:
(other-buffer)
You should see #<buffer*scratch*> appear in the echo area, or the name of whatever
other buffer you switched back from most recently6.

2.3 Switching Buffers

The other-buffer function actually provides a buffer when it is used as an argument
to a function that requires one. We can see this by using other-buffer and switch-to-
buffer to switch to a different buffer.
But first, a brief introduction to the switch-to-buffer function. When you switched
back and forth from Info to the *scratch* buffer to evaluate (buffer-name), you most
likely typed C-xb and then typed *scratch*7 when prompted in the minibuffer for the
name of the buffer to which you wanted to switch. The keystrokes, C-xb, cause the
Lisp interpreter to evaluate the interactive function switch-to-buffer. As we said
before, this is how Emacs works: different keystrokes call or run different functions.
For example, C-f calls forward-char, M-e calls forward-sentence, and so on.
By writing switch-to-buffer in an expression, and giving it a buffer to switch to, we
can switch buffers just the way C-xb does:
(switch-to-buffer (other-buffer))
The symbol switch-to-buffer is the first element of the list, so the Lisp interpreter will
treat it as a function and carry out the instructions that are attached to it. But before
doing that, the interpreter will note that other-buffer is inside parentheses and work
on that symbol first. other-buffer is the first (and in this case, the only) element of
this list, so the Lisp interpreter calls or runs the function. It returns another buffer.
Next, the interpreter runs switch-to-buffer, passing to it, as an argument, the other
buffer, which is what Emacs will switch to. If you are reading this in Info, try this
now. Evaluate the expression. (To get back, type C-x bRET.)3
In the programming examples in later sections of this document, you will see the
function set-buffer more often than switch-to-buffer. This is because of a difference

6 Actually, by default, if the buffer from which you just switched is visible to you in
another window, other-buffer will choose the most recent buffer that you cannot see; this is a
subtlety that I often forget.
7 Or rather, to save typing, you probably only typed RET if the default buffer was
*scratch*, or if it was different, then you typed just part of the name, such as *sc, pressed
your TAB key to cause it to expand to the full name, and then typed RET.
 25
between computer programs and humans: humans have eyes and expect to see the
buffer on which they are working on their computer terminals. This is so obvious, it
almost goes without saying. However, programs do not have eyes. When a computer
program works on a buffer, that buffer does not need to be visible on the screen.
switch-to-buffer is designed for humans and does two different things: it switches
the buffer to which Emacs’s attention is directed; and it switches the buffer
displayed in the window to the new buffer. set-buffer, on the other hand, does only
one thing: it switches the attention of the computer program to a different buffer.
The buffer on the screen remains unchanged (of course, normally nothing happens
there until the command finishes running).
Also, we have just introduced another jargon term, the word call. When you
evaluate a list in which the first symbol is a function, you are calling that function.
The use of the term comes from the notion of the function as an entity that can do
something for you if you call it—just as a plumber is an entity who can fix a leak if
you call him or her.

2.4 Buffer Size and the Location of Point

Finally, let’s look at several rather simple functions, buffer-size, point, point-min, and
point-max. These give information about the size of a buffer and the location of point
within it.
The function buffer-size tells you the size of the current buffer; that is, the
function returns a count of the number of characters in the buffer.
(buffer-size)
You can evaluate this in the usual way, by positioning the cursor after the expression
and typing C-xC-e.
In Emacs, the current position of the cursor is called point. The expression (point)
returns a number that tells you where the cursor is located as a count of the number
of characters from the beginning of the buffer up to point.

3
Remember, this expression will move you to your most recent other buffer that you
cannot see. If you really want to go to your most recently selected buffer, even if you can
still see it, you need to evaluate the following more complex expression:
(switch-to-buffer (other-buffer (current-buffer) t))
In this case, the first argument to other-buffer tells it which buffer to skip—the current
one—and the second argument tells other-buffer it is OK to switch to a visible buffer. In
regular use, switch-to-buffer takes you to a buffer not visible in windows since you would
most likely use C-xo (other-window) to go to another visible buffer.
Section 2.5: Exercise

You can see the character count for point in this buffer by evaluating the
following expression in the usual way:
26 Chapter 2: Practicing Evaluation
(point)
As I write this, the value of point is 65724. The point function is frequently used in
some of the examples later in this book.
The value of point depends, of course, on its location within the buffer. If you
evaluate point in this spot, the number will be larger:
(point)
For me, the value of point in this location is 66043, which means that there are 319
characters (including spaces) between the two expressions. (Doubtless, you will see
different numbers, since I will have edited this since I first evaluated point.)
The function point-min is somewhat similar to point, but it returns the value of
the minimum permissible value of point in the current buffer. This is the number 1
unless narrowing is in effect. (Narrowing is a mechanism whereby you can restrict
yourself, or a program, to operations on just a part of a buffer. See Chapter 6
“Narrowing and Widening”, page 73.) Likewise, the function point-max returns the
value of the maximum permissible value of point in the current buffer.

2.5 Exercise
Find a file with which you are working and move towards its middle. Find its buffer
name, file name, length, and your position in the file.
 27
3 How To Write Function Definitions
When the Lisp interpreter evaluates a list, it looks to see whether the first symbol on
the list has a function definition attached to it; or, put another way, whether the
symbol points to a function definition. If it does, the computer carries out the
instructions in the definition. A symbol that has a function definition is called,
simply, a function (although, properly speaking, the definition is the function and the
symbol refers to it.)
All functions are defined in terms of other functions, except for a few primitive
functions that are written in the C programming language. When you write
functions’ definitions, you will write them in Emacs Lisp and use other functions as
your building blocks. Some of the functions you will use will themselves be written
in Emacs Lisp (perhaps by you) and some will be primitives written in C. The
primitive functions are used exactly like those written in Emacs Lisp and behave like
them. They are written in C so we can easily run GNU Emacs on any computer that
has sufficient power and can run C.
Let me re-emphasize this: when you write code in Emacs Lisp, you do not
distinguish between the use of functions written in C and the use of functions
written in Emacs Lisp. The difference is irrelevant. I mention the distinction only
because it is interesting to know. Indeed, unless you investigate, you won’t know
whether an already-written function is written in Emacs Lisp or C.

3.1 The defun Macro

In Lisp, a symbol such as mark-whole-buffer has code attached to it that tells the
computer what to do when the function is called. This code is called the function
definition and is created by evaluating a Lisp expression that starts with the symbol
defun (which is an abbreviation for define function).
In subsequent sections, we will look at function definitions from the Emacs
source code, such as mark-whole-buffer. In this section, we will describe a simple
function definition so you can see how it looks. This function definition uses
arithmetic because it makes for a simple example. Some people dislike examples
using arithmetic; however, if you are such a person, do not despair. Hardly any of the
code we will study in the remainder of this introduction involves arithmetic or
mathematics. The examples mostly involve text in one way or another.
A function definition has up to five parts following the word defun:
1. The name of the symbol to which the function definition should be attached.
2. A list of the arguments that will be passed to the function. If no argumentswill
be passed to the function, this is an empty list, ().
3. Documentation describing the function. (Technically optional, but
stronglyrecommended.)
28 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
4. Optionally, an expression to make the function interactive so you can use itby
typing M-x and then the name of the function; or by typing an appropriate key
or keychord.
Section 3.1: The defun Macro

5. The code that instructs the computer what to do: the body of the function
definition.
It is helpful to think of the five parts of a function definition as being organized in
a template, with slots for each part:
(defun function-name (arguments...)
"optional-documentation..."
(interactive argument-passing-info) ; optional body...)
As an example, here is the code for a function that multiplies its argument by 7.
(This example is not interactive. See Section 3.3 “Making a Function Interactive”,
page 29, for that information.)
(defun multiply-by-seven (number)
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(* 7 number))
This definition begins with a parenthesis and the symbol defun, followed by the
name of the function.
The name of the function is followed by a list that contains the arguments that
will be passed to the function. This list is called the argument list. In this example, the
list has only one element, the symbol, number. When the function is used, the symbol
will be bound to the value that is used as the argument to the function.
Instead of choosing the word number for the name of the argument, I could have
picked any other name. For example, I could have chosen the word multiplicand. I
picked the word “number” because it tells what kind of value is intended for this
slot; but I could just as well have chosen the word “multiplicand” to indicate the role
that the value placed in this slot will play in the workings of the function. I could
have called it foogle, but that would have been a bad choice because it would not tell
humans what it means. The choice of name is up to the programmer and should be
chosen to make the meaning of the function clear.
Indeed, you can choose any name you wish for a symbol in an argument list, even
the name of a symbol used in some other function: the name you use in an argument
list is private to that particular definition. In that definition, the name refers to a
different entity than any use of the same name outside the function definition.
Suppose you have a nick-name “Shorty” in your family; when your family members
refer to “Shorty”, they mean you. But outside your family, in a movie, for example, the
name “Shorty” refers to someone else. Because a name in an argument list is private
to the function definition, you can change the value of such a symbol inside the body
of a function without changing its value outside the function. The effect is similar to
that produced by a let expression. (See Section 3.6 “let”, page 33.)
 29
The argument list is followed by the documentation string that describes the
function. This is what you see when you type C-hf and the name of a function.
Incidentally, when you write a documentation string like this, you should make the
first line a complete sentence since some commands, such as apropos, print only the
first line of a multi-line documentation string. Also, you should not indent the second
line of a documentation string, if you have one, because that looks odd when you use
C-hf (describe-function). The documentation string is optional, but it is so useful, it
should be included in almost every function you write.
The third line of the example consists of the body of the function definition.
(Most functions’ definitions, of course, are longer than this.) In this function, the
body is the list, (*7number), which says to multiply the value of number by 7. (In
Emacs Lisp, * is the function for multiplication, just as + is the function for addition.)
When you use the multiply-by-seven function, the argument number evaluates to
the actual number you want used. Here is an example that shows how multiply-by-
seven is used; but don’t try to evaluate this yet!
(multiply-by-seven 3)
The symbol number, specified in the function definition in the next section, is bound
to the value 3 in the actual use of the function. Note that although number was inside
parentheses in the function definition, the argument passed to the multiply-byseven
function is not in parentheses. The parentheses are written in the function definition
so the computer can figure out where the argument list ends and the rest of the
function definition begins.
If you evaluate this example, you are likely to get an error message. (Go ahead, try
it!) This is because we have written the function definition, but not yet told the
computer about the definition—we have not yet loaded the function definition in
Emacs. Installing a function is the process that tells the Lisp interpreter the
definition of the function. Installation is described in the next section.

3.2 Install a Function Definition

If you are reading this inside of Info in Emacs, you can try out the multiply-byseven
function by first evaluating the function definition and then evaluating (multiply-by-
seven3). A copy of the function definition follows. Place the cursor after the last
parenthesis of the function definition and type C-xC-e. When you do this, multiply-by-
seven will appear in the echo area. (What this means is that when a function
definition is evaluated, the value it returns is the name of the defined function.) At
the same time, this action installs the function definition.
(defun multiply-by-seven (number)
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(* 7 number))
By evaluating this defun, you have just installed multiply-by-seven in Emacs. The
function is now just as much a part of Emacs as forward-word or any other editing
function you use. (multiply-by-seven will stay installed until you quit Emacs. To
30 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
reload code automatically whenever you start Emacs, see Section 3.5 “Installing
Code Permanently”, page 32.)
You can see the effect of installing multiply-by-seven by evaluating the following
sample. Place the cursor after the following expression and type C-xC-e. The number
21 will appear in the echo area.
(multiply-by-seven 3)
If you wish, you can read the documentation for the function by typing C-h f
(describe-function) and then the name of the function, multiply-by-seven. When you
do this, a *Help* window will appear on your screen that says:
Section 3.3: Make a Function Interactive

multiply-by-seven is a Lisp function.

(multiply-by-seven NUMBER)

Multiply NUMBER by seven.

(To return to a single window on your screen, type C-x1.)

3.2.1 Change a Function Definition

If you want to change the code in multiply-by-seven, just rewrite it. To install the new
version in place of the old one, evaluate the function definition again. This is how
you modify code in Emacs. It is very simple.
As an example, you can change the multiply-by-seven function to add the number
to itself seven times instead of multiplying the number by seven. It produces the
same answer, but by a different path. At the same time, we will add a comment to the
code; a comment is text that the Lisp interpreter ignores, but that a human reader
may find useful or enlightening. The comment is that this is the second version.
(defun multiply-by-seven (number) ; Second version.
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(+ number number number number number number number))
The comment follows a semicolon, ‘;’. In Lisp, everything on a line that follows a
semicolon is a comment. The end of the line is the end of the comment. To stretch a
comment over two or more lines, begin each line with a semicolon.
See Section 16.3 “Beginning a .emacs File”, page 199, and Section “Comments” in
The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more about comments.
You can install this version of the multiply-by-seven function by evaluating it in
the same way you evaluated the first function: place the cursor after the last
parenthesis and type C-xC-e.
In summary, this is how you write code in Emacs Lisp: you write a function;
install it; test it; and then make fixes or enhancements and install it again.
 31
3.3 Make a Function Interactive
You make a function interactive by placing a list that begins with the special form
interactive immediately after the documentation. A user can invoke an interactive
function by typing M-x and then the name of the function; or by typing the keys to
which it is bound, for example, by typing C-n for next-line or C-xh for mark-whole-
buffer.
Interestingly, when you call an interactive function interactively, the value
returned is not automatically displayed in the echo area. This is because you often
call an interactive function for its side effects, such as moving forward by a word or
line, and not for the value returned. If the returned value were displayed in the echo
area each time you typed a key, it would be very distracting.
Both the use of the special form interactive and one way to display a value in the
echo area can be illustrated by creating an interactive version of multiply-byseven.
Here is the code:
(defun multiply-by-seven (number) ; Interactive version.
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(interactive "p")
(message "The result is %d" (* 7 number)))
You can install this code by placing your cursor after it and typing C-xC-e. The name
of the function will appear in your echo area. Then, you can use this code by typing
C-u and a number and then typing M-xmultiply-by-seven and pressing RET. The phrase
‘Theresultis...’ followed by the product will appear in the echo area.
Speaking more generally, you invoke a function like this in either of two ways:
1. By typing a prefix argument that contains the number to be passed, andthen
typing M-x and the name of the function, as with C-u3M-xforwardsentence; or,
2. By typing whatever key or keychord the function is bound to, as with C-u3 M-e.
Both the examples just mentioned work identically to move point forward three
sentences. (Since multiply-by-seven is not bound to a key, it could not be used as an
example of key binding.)
(See Section 16.7 “Some Key Bindings”, page 203, to learn how to bind a
command to a key.)
A prefix argument is passed to an interactive function by typing the META key
followed by a number, for example, M-3M-e, or by typing C-u and then a number, for
example, C-u3M-e (if you type C-u without a number, it defaults to 4).

3.3.1 An Interactive multiply-by-seven

Let’s look at the use of the special form interactive and then at the function message
in the interactive version of multiply-by-seven. You will recall that the function
definition looks like this:
(defun multiply-by-seven (number) ; Interactive version.
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(interactive "p")
32 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
(message "The result is %d" (* 7 number)))
In this function, the expression, (interactive"p"), is a list of two elements. The "p"
tells Emacs to pass the prefix argument to the function and use its value for the
argument of the function.
The argument will be a number. This means that the symbol number will be
bound to a number in the line:
(message "The result is %d" (* 7 number))
Section 3.4: Different Options for interactive

For example, if your prefix argument is 5, the Lisp interpreter will evaluate the line
as if it were:
(message "The result is %d" (* 7 5))
(If you are reading this in GNU Emacs, you can evaluate this expression yourself.)
First, the interpreter will evaluate the inner list, which is (*75). This returns a value
of 35. Next, it will evaluate the outer list, passing the values of the second and
subsequent elements of the list to the function message.
As we have seen, message is an Emacs Lisp function especially designed for
sending a one line message to a user. (See Section 1.8.5 “The message function”, page
14.) In summary, the message function prints its first argument in the echo area as is,
except for occurrences of ‘%d’ or ‘%s’ (and various other %-sequences which we have
not mentioned). When it sees a control sequence, the function looks to the second or
subsequent arguments and prints the value of the argument in the location in the
string where the control sequence is located.
In the interactive multiply-by-seven function, the control string is ‘%d’, which
requires a number, and the value returned by evaluating (*75) is the number 35.
Consequently, the number 35 is printed in place of the ‘%d’ and the message is ‘The
resultis35’.
(Note that when you call the function multiply-by-seven, the message is printed
without quotes, but when you call message, the text is printed in double quotes. This
is because the value returned by message is what appears in the echo area when you
evaluate an expression whose first element is message; but when embedded in a
function, message prints the text as a side effect without quotes.)

3.4 Different Options for interactive

In the example, multiply-by-seven used "p" as the argument to interactive. This
argument told Emacs to interpret your typing either C-u followed by a number or
META followed by a number as a command to pass that number to the function as its
argument. Emacs has more than twenty characters predefined for use with
interactive. In almost every case, one of these options will enable you to pass the
right information interactively to a function. (See Section “Code Characters for
interactive” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)
 33
Consider the function zap-to-char. Its interactive expression is
(interactive "p\ncZap to char: ")
The first part of the argument to interactive is ‘p’, with which you are already
familiar. This argument tells Emacs to interpret a prefix, as a number to be passed to
the function. You can specify a prefix either by typing C-u followed by a number or by
typing META followed by a number. The prefix is the number of specified characters.
Thus, if your prefix is three and the specified character is ‘x’, then you will delete all
the text up to and including the third next ‘x’. If you do not set a prefix, then you
delete all the text up to and including the specified character, but no more.
The ‘c’ tells the function the name of the character to which to delete.
More formally, a function with two or more arguments can have information
passed to each argument by adding parts to the string that follows interactive. When
you do this, the information is passed to each argument in the same order it is
specified in the interactive list. In the string, each part is separated from the next part
by a ‘\n’, which is a newline. For example, you can follow ‘p’ with a ‘\n’ and an
‘cZaptochar: ’. This causes Emacs to pass the value of the prefix argument (if there is
one) and the character.
In this case, the function definition looks like the following, where arg and char
are the symbols to which interactive binds the prefix argument and the specified
character:
(defun name-of-function (arg char)
"documentation..."
(interactive "p\ncZap to char: ") body-of-function...)
(The space after the colon in the prompt makes it look better when you are
prompted. See Section 5.1 “The Definition of copy-to-buffer”, page 59, for an
example.)
When a function does not take arguments, interactive does not require any. Such a
function contains the simple expression (interactive). The mark-wholebuffer function
is like this.
Alternatively, if the special letter-codes are not right for your application, you can
pass your own arguments to interactive as a list.
See Section 4.4 “The Definition of append-to-buffer”, page 52, for an example. See
Section “Using Interactive” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for a more
complete explanation about this technique.

3.5 Install Code Permanently

When you install a function definition by evaluating it, it will stay installed until you
quit Emacs. The next time you start a new session of Emacs, the function will not be
installed unless you evaluate the function definition again.
At some point, you may want to have code installed automatically whenever you
start a new session of Emacs. There are several ways of doing this:
34 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
• If you have code that is just for yourself, you can put the code for the
funcSection 3.6: let

tion definition in your .emacs initialization file. When you start Emacs, your
.emacs file is automatically evaluated and all the function definitions within it
are installed. See Chapter 16 “Your .emacs File”, page 196.
• Alternatively, you can put the function definitions that you want installed in one
or more files of their own and use the load function to cause Emacs to evaluate
and thereby install each of the functions in the files. See Section 16.9 “Loading
Files”, page 205.
• Thirdly, if you have code that your whole site will use, it is usual to put it in a
file called site-init.el that is loaded when Emacs is built. This makes the code
available to everyone who uses your machine. (See the INSTALL file that is part
of the Emacs distribution.)
Finally, if you have code that everyone who uses Emacs may want, you can post it
on a computer network or send a copy to the Free Software Foundation. (When you
do this, please license the code and its documentation under a license that permits
other people to run, copy, study, modify, and redistribute the code and which
protects you from having your work taken from you.) If you send a copy of your code
to the Free Software Foundation, and properly protect yourself and others, it may be
included in the next release of Emacs. In large part, this is how Emacs has grown
over the past years, by donations.

3.6 let
The let expression is a special form in Lisp that you will need to use in most function
definitions.
let is used to attach or bind a symbol to a value in such a way that the Lisp
interpreter will not confuse the variable with a variable of the same name that is not
part of the function.
To understand why the let special form is necessary, consider the situation in
which you own a home that you generally refer to as “the house”, as in the sentence,
“The house needs painting.” If you are visiting a friend and your host refers to “the
house”, he is likely to be referring to his house, not yours, that is, to a different house.
If your friend is referring to his house and you think he is referring to your house,
you may be in for some confusion. The same thing could happen in Lisp if a variable
that is used inside of one function has the same name as a variable that is used
inside of another function, and the two are not intended to refer to the same value.
The let special form prevents this kind of confusion.
The let special form prevents confusion. let creates a name for a local variable that
overshadows any use of the same name outside the let expression (in computer
science jargon, we call this binding the variable). This is like understanding that in
your host’s home, whenever he refers to “the house”, he means his house, not yours.
 35
(The symbols used to name function arguments are bound as local variables in
exactly the same way. See Section 3.1 “The defun Macro”, page 26.)
Another way to think about let is that it defines a special region in your code:
within the body of the let expression, the variables you’ve named have their own
local meaning. Outside of the let body, they have other meanings (or they may not be
defined at all). This means that inside the let body, calling setq for a variable named
by the let expression will set the value of the local variable of that name. However,
outside of the let body (such as when calling a function that was defined elsewhere),
calling setq for a variable named by the let expression will not affect that local
variable.8let can create more than one variable at once. Also, let gives each variable it
creates an initial value, either a value specified by you, or nil. (In the jargon, this is
binding the variable to the value.) After let has created and bound the variables, it
executes the code in the body of the let, and returns the value of the last expression
in the body, as the value of the whole let expression. (“Execute” is a jargon term that
means to evaluate a list; it comes from the use of the word meaning “to give practical
effect to” (Oxford English Dictionary). Since you evaluate an expression to perform an
action, “execute” has evolved as a synonym to “evaluate”.)

3.6.1 The Parts of a let Expression

A let expression is a list of three parts. The first part is the symbol let. The second
part is a list, called a varlist, each element of which is either a symbol by itself or a
two-element list, the first element of which is a symbol. The third part of the let
expression is the body of the let. The body usually consists of one or more lists.
A template for a let expression looks like this:
(let varlist body...)
The symbols in the varlist are the variables that are given initial values by the let
special form. Symbols by themselves are given the initial value of nil; and each
symbol that is the first element of a two-element list is bound to the value that is
returned when the Lisp interpreter evaluates the second element.
Thus, a varlist might look like this: (thread(needles3)). In this case, in a let
expression, Emacs binds the symbol thread to an initial value of nil, and binds the
symbol needles to an initial value of 3.
When you write a let expression, what you do is put the appropriate expressions
in the slots of the let expression template.
If the varlist is composed of two-element lists, as is often the case, the template
for the let expression looks like this:
(let ((variable value) (variable value)
...) body...)

8 This describes the behavior of let when using a style called “lexical binding” (see
Section 3.6.4 “How let Binds Variables”, page 36).
36 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
3.6.2 Sample let Expression
The following expression creates and gives initial values to the two variables zebra
and tiger. The body of the let expression is a list which calls the message function.
Section 3.6: let

(let ((zebra "stripes")

(tiger "fierce"))
(message "One kind of animal has %s and another is %s." zebra tiger))
Here, the varlist is ((zebra"stripes")(tiger"fierce")).
The two variables are zebra and tiger. Each variable is the first element of a two-
element list and each value is the second element of its two-element list. In the
varlist, Emacs binds the variable zebra to the value "stripes"9, and binds the variable
tiger to the value "fierce". In this example, both values are strings. The values could
just as well have been another list or a symbol. The body of the let follows after the
list holding the variables. In this example, the body is a list that uses the message
function to print a string in the echo area.
You may evaluate the example in the usual fashion, by placing the cursor after the
last parenthesis and typing C-xC-e. When you do this, the following will appear in the
echo area:
"One kind of animal has stripes and another is fierce."
As we have seen before, the message function prints its first argument, except for
‘%s’. In this example, the value of the variable zebra is printed at the location of the
first ‘%s’ and the value of the variable tiger is printed at the location of the second
‘%s’.

3.6.3 Uninitialized Variables in a let Statement

If you do not bind the variables in a let statement to specific initial values, they will
automatically be bound to an initial value of nil, as in the following expression:
(let ((birch 3) pine
fir
(oak 'some))
(message
"Here are %d variables with %s, %s, and %s value." birch pine fir oak))
Here, the varlist is ((birch3)pinefir(oak'some)).
If you evaluate this expression in the usual way, the following will appear in your
echo area:
"Here are 3 variables with nil, nil, and some value."
In this example, Emacs binds the symbol birch to the number 3, binds the symbols
pine and fir to nil, and binds the symbol oak to the value some.

9 According to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, “. . . zebras become impossibly
dangerous as they grow older” but the claim here is that they do not become fierce like a
tiger. (1997, W. W. Norton and Co., ISBN 0-393-03894-2, page 171)
 37
Note that in the first part of the let, the variables pine and fir stand alone as atoms
that are not surrounded by parentheses; this is because they are being bound to nil,
the empty list. But oak is bound to some and so is a part of the list (oak'some).
Similarly, birch is bound to the number 3 and so is in a list with that number. (Since a
number evaluates to itself, the number does not need to be quoted. Also, the number
is printed in the message using a ‘%d’ rather than a ‘%s’.) The four variables as a
group are put into a list to delimit them from the body of the let.

3.6.4 How let Binds Variables

Emacs Lisp supports two different ways of binding variable names to their values.
These ways affect the parts of your program where a particular binding is valid. For
historical reasons, Emacs Lisp uses a form of variable binding called dynamic binding
by default. However, in this manual we discuss the preferred form of binding, called
lexical binding, unless otherwise noted (in the future, the Emacs maintainers plan to
change the default to lexical binding). If you have programmed in other languages
before, you’re likely already familiar with how lexical binding behaves.
In order to use lexical binding in a program, you should add this to the first line
of your Emacs Lisp file:
;;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
For more information about this, see Section “Variable Scoping” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.

Differences Between Lexical and Dynamic Binding

As we discussed before (see hundefinedi “Prevent confusion”, page hundefinedi),
when you create local variables with let under lexical binding, those variables are
valid only within the body of the let expression. In other parts of your code, they
have other meanings, so if you call a function defined elsewhere within the let body,
that function would be unable to “see” the local variables you’ve created. (On the
other hand, if you call a function that was defined within a let body, that function
would be able to see—and modify—the local variables from that let expression.)
Under dynamic binding, the rules are different: instead, when you use let, the
local variables you’ve created are valid during execution of the let expression. This
means that, if your let expression calls a function, that function can see these local
variables, regardless of where the function is defined (including in another file
entirely).
Another way to think about let when using dynamic binding is that every variable
name has a global “stack” of bindings, and whenever you use that variable’s name, it
refers to the binding on the top of the stack. (You can imagine this like a stack of
papers on your desk with the values written on them.) When you bind a variable
dynamically with let, it puts the new binding you’ve specified on the top of the stack,
and then executes the let body. Once the let body finishes, it takes that binding off of
the stack, revealing the one it had (if any) before the let expression.
38 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
Example of Lexical vs. Dynamic Binding
In some cases, both lexical and dynamic binding behave identically. However, in
other cases, they can change the meaning of your program. For example, see what
happens in this code under lexical binding:
;;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
Section 3.7: The if Special Form

(setq x 0)

(defun getx ()
x)

(setq x 1)

(let ((x 2))

(getx))
⇒1
Here, the result of (getx) is 1. Under lexical binding, getx doesn’t see the value from
our let expression. That’s because the body of getx is outside of the body of our let
expression. Since getx is defined at the top, global level of our code (i.e. not inside the
body of any let expression), it looks for and finds x at the global level as well. When
executing getx, the current global value of x is 1, so that’s what getx returns.
If we use dynamic binding instead, the behavior is different:
;;; -*- lexical-binding: nil -*-

(setq x 0)

(defun getx ()
x)

(setq x 1)

(let ((x 2))

(getx))
⇒2
Now, the result of (getx) is 2! That’s because under dynamic binding, when executing
getx, the current binding for x at the top of our stack is the one from our let binding.
This time, getx doesn’t see the global value for x, since its binding is below the one
from our let expression in the stack of bindings.
 39
(Some variables are also “special”, and they are always dynamically bound even
when lexical-binding is t. See Section 8.5 “Initializing a Variable with defvar”, page
104.)

3.7 The if Special Form

Another special form is the conditional if. This form is used to instruct the computer
to make decisions. You can write function definitions without using if, but it is used
often enough, and is important enough, to be included here. It is used, for example,
in the code for the function beginning-of-buffer.
The basic idea behind an if, is that if a test is true, then an expression is evaluated.
If the test is not true, the expression is not evaluated. For example, you might make a
decision such as, “if it is warm and sunny, then go to the beach!”
An if expression written in Lisp does not use the word “then”; the test and the
action are the second and third elements of the list whose first element is if.
Nonetheless, the test part of an if expression is often called the if-part and the second
argument is often called the then-part.
Also, when an if expression is written, the true-or-false-test is usually written on
the same line as the symbol if, but the action to carry out if the test is true, the then-
part, is written on the second and subsequent lines. This makes the if expression
easier to read.
(if true-or-false-test action-to-carry-out-if-test-is-true)
The true-or-false-test will be an expression that is evaluated by the Lisp interpreter.
Here is an example that you can evaluate in the usual manner. The test is whether
the number 5 is greater than the number 4. Since it is, the message ‘5is greaterthan4!’
will be printed.
(if (> 5 4) ; if-part
(message "5 is greater than 4!")) ; then-part
(The function > tests whether its first argument is greater than its second argument
and returns true if it is.)
Of course, in actual use, the test in an if expression will not be fixed for all time as
it is by the expression (>54). Instead, at least one of the variables used in the test will
be bound to a value that is not known ahead of time. (If the value were known ahead
of time, we would not need to run the test!)
For example, the value may be bound to an argument of a function definition. In
the following function definition, the character of the animal is a value that is passed
to the function. If the value bound to characteristic is "fierce", then the message,
‘Itisatiger!’ will be printed; otherwise, nil will be returned.
(defun type-of-animal (characteristic)
"Print message in echo area depending on CHARACTERISTIC. If the
CHARACTERISTIC is the string \"fierce\", then warn of a tiger."
(if (equal characteristic "fierce")
40 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
(message "It is a tiger!")))
Section 3.7: The if Special Form

If you are reading this inside of GNU Emacs, you can evaluate the function definition
in the usual way to install it in Emacs, and then you can evaluate the following two
expressions to see the results:
(type-of-animal "fierce")

(type-of-animal "striped")

When you evaluate (type-of-animal"fierce"), you will see the following message
printed in the echo area: "Itisatiger!"; and when you evaluate (type-ofanimal"striped")
you will see nil printed in the echo area.

3.7.1 The type-of-animal Function in Detail

Let’s look at the type-of-animal function in detail.
The function definition for type-of-animal was written by filling the slots of two
templates, one for a function definition as a whole, and a second for an if expression.
The template for every function that is not interactive is:
(defun name-of-function (argument-list)
"documentation..." body...)
The parts of the function that match this template look like this:
(defun type-of-animal (characteristic)
"Print message in echo area depending on CHARACTERISTIC. If the
CHARACTERISTIC is the string \"fierce\", then warn of a tiger."
body: the if expression)
The name of function is type-of-animal; it is passed the value of one argument.
The argument list is followed by a multi-line documentation string. The
documentation string is included in the example because it is a good habit to write
documentation string for every function definition. The body of the function
definition consists of the if expression.
The template for an if expression looks like this:
(if true-or-false-test action-to-carry-out-if-the-test-returns-true)
In the type-of-animal function, the code for the if looks like this:
(if (equal characteristic "fierce")
(message "It is a tiger!"))
Here, the true-or-false-test is the expression:
(equal characteristic "fierce")
In Lisp, equal is a function that determines whether its first argument is equal to its
second argument. The second argument is the string "fierce" and the first argument
is the value of the symbol characteristic—in other words, the argument passed to this
function.
 41
In the first exercise of type-of-animal, the argument "fierce" is passed to type-of-
animal. Since "fierce" is equal to "fierce", the expression, (equal characteristic"fierce"),
returns a value of true. When this happens, the if evaluates the second argument or
then-part of the if: (message"Itisa tiger!").
On the other hand, in the second exercise of type-of-animal, the argument
"striped" is passed to type-of-animal. "striped" is not equal to "fierce", so the then-part
is not evaluated and nil is returned by the if expression.

3.8 If–then–else Expressions

An if expression may have an optional third argument, called the else-part, for the
case when the true-or-false-test returns false. When this happens, the second
argument or then-part of the overall if expression is not evaluated, but the third or
else-part is evaluated. You might think of this as the cloudy day alternative for the
decision “if it is warm and sunny, then go to the beach, else read a book!”.
The word “else” is not written in the Lisp code; the else-part of an if expression
comes after the then-part. In the written Lisp, the else-part is usually written to start
on a line of its own and is indented less than the then-part:
(if true-or-false-test action-to-carry-out-if-the-test-returns-true action-to-
carry-out-if-the-test-returns-false)
For example, the following if expression prints the message ‘4isnotgreater than5!’
when you evaluate it in the usual way:
(if (> 4 5) ; if-part
(message "4 falsely greater than 5!") ; then-part
(message "4 is not greater than 5!")) ; else-part
Note that the different levels of indentation make it easy to distinguish the thenpart
from the else-part. (GNU Emacs has several commands that automatically indent if
expressions correctly. See Section 1.1.3 “GNU Emacs Helps You Type Lists”, page 3.)
We can extend the type-of-animal function to include an else-part by simply
incorporating an additional part to the if expression.
Section 3.9: Truth and Falsehood in Emacs Lisp

You can see the consequences of doing this if you evaluate the following version
of the type-of-animal function definition to install it and then evaluate the two
subsequent expressions to pass different arguments to the function.
(defun type-of-animal (characteristic) ; Second version.
"Print message in echo area depending on CHARACTERISTIC. If the
CHARACTERISTIC is the string \"fierce\", then warn of a tiger; else say it is
not fierce." (if (equal characteristic "fierce")
(message "It is a tiger!")
(message "It is not fierce!")))

(type-of-animal "fierce")
42 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
(type-of-animal "striped")

When you evaluate (type-of-animal"fierce"), you will see the following message
printed in the echo area: "Itisatiger!"; but when you evaluate (type-ofanimal"striped"),
you will see "Itisnotfierce!".
(Of course, if the characteristic were "ferocious", the message "Itisnot fierce!"
would be printed; and it would be misleading! When you write code, you need to
take into account the possibility that some such argument will be tested by the if and
write your program accordingly.)

3.9 Truth and Falsehood in Emacs Lisp

There is an important aspect to the truth test in an if expression. So far, we have
spoken of “true” and “false” as values of predicates as if they were new kinds of
Emacs Lisp objects. In fact, “false” is just our old friend nil. Anything else— anything
at all—is “true”.
The expression that tests for truth is interpreted as true if the result of evaluating
it is a value that is not nil. In other words, the result of the test is considered true if
the value returned is a number such as 47, a string such as "hello", or a symbol
(other than nil) such as flowers, or a list (so long as it is not empty), or even a buffer!
Before illustrating a test for truth, we need an explanation of nil.
In Emacs Lisp, the symbol nil has two meanings. First, it means the empty list.
Second, it means false and is the value returned when a true-or-false-test tests false.
nil can be written as an empty list, (), or as nil. As far as the Lisp interpreter is
concerned, () and nil are the same. Humans, however, tend to use nil for false and ()
for the empty list.
In Emacs Lisp, any value that is not nil—is not the empty list—is considered true.
This means that if an evaluation returns something that is not an empty list, an if
expression will test true. For example, if a number is put in the slot for the test, it will
be evaluated and will return itself, since that is what numbers do when evaluated. In
this conditional, the if expression will test true. The expression tests false only when
nil, an empty list, is returned by evaluating the expression.
You can see this by evaluating the two expressions in the following examples.
In the first example, the number 4 is evaluated as the test in the if expression and
returns itself; consequently, the then-part of the expression is evaluated and
returned: ‘true’ appears in the echo area. In the second example, the nil indicates
false; consequently, the else-part of the expression is evaluated and returned: ‘false’
appears in the echo area.
(if 4
'true
'false)

(if nil
'true
 43
'false)
Incidentally, if some other useful value is not available for a test that returns true,
then the Lisp interpreter will return the symbol t for true. For example, the
expression (>54) returns t when evaluated, as you can see by evaluating it in the
usual way:
(> 5 4)
On the other hand, this function returns nil if the test is false.
(> 4 5)

3.10 save-excursion
The save-excursion function is the final special form that we will discuss in this
chapter.
In Emacs Lisp programs used for editing, the save-excursion function is very
common. It saves the location of point, executes the body of the function, and then
restores point to its previous position if its location was changed. Its primary
purpose is to keep the user from being surprised and disturbed by unexpected
movement of point.
Before discussing save-excursion, however, it may be useful first to review what
point and mark are in GNU Emacs. Point is the current location of the cursor.
Wherever the cursor is, that is point. More precisely, on terminals where the cursor
appears to be on top of a character, point is immediately before the character. In
Emacs Lisp, point is an integer. The first character in a buffer is number one, the
second is number two, and so on. The function point returns the current position of
the cursor as a number. Each buffer has its own value for point.
The mark is another position in the buffer; its value can be set with a command
such as C-SPC (set-mark-command). If a mark has been set, you can use the command
C-xC-x (exchange-point-and-mark) to cause the cursor to jump to the mark and set the
mark to be the previous position of point. In addition, if you set another mark, the
position of the previous mark is saved in the mark ring. Many mark positions can be
saved this way. You can jump the cursor to a saved mark by typing C-uC-SPC one or
more times.
The part of the buffer between point and mark is called the region. Numerous
commands work on the region, including center-region, count-words-region, kill-
region, and print-region.
Section 3.10: save-excursion

The save-excursion special form saves the location of point and restores this
position after the code within the body of the special form is evaluated by the Lisp
interpreter. Thus, if point were in the beginning of a piece of text and some code
moved point to the end of the buffer, the save-excursion would put point back to
where it was before, after the expressions in the body of the function were evaluated.
44 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
In Emacs, a function frequently moves point as part of its internal workings even
though a user would not expect this. For example, count-words-region moves point.
To prevent the user from being bothered by jumps that are both unexpected and
(from the user’s point of view) unnecessary, save-excursion is often used to keep
point in the location expected by the user. The use of save-excursion is good
housekeeping.
To make sure the house stays clean, save-excursion restores the value of point
even if something goes wrong in the code inside of it (or, to be more precise and to
use the proper jargon, “in case of abnormal exit”). This feature is very helpful.
In addition to recording the value of point, save-excursion keeps track of the
current buffer, and restores it, too. This means you can write code that will change
the buffer and have save-excursion switch you back to the original buffer. This is how
save-excursion is used in append-to-buffer. (See Section 4.4 “The Definition of append-
to-buffer”, page 52.)

3.10.1 Template for a save-excursion Expression

The template for code using save-excursion is simple:
(save-excursion body...)
The body of the function is one or more expressions that will be evaluated in
sequence by the Lisp interpreter. If there is more than one expression in the body,
the value of the last one will be returned as the value of the save-excursion function.
The other expressions in the body are evaluated only for their side effects; and save-
excursion itself is used only for its side effect (which is restoring the position of
point).
In more detail, the template for a save-excursion expression looks like this:
(save-excursion first-expression-in-body second-
expression-in-body third-expression-in-body
...
last-expression-in-body)
An expression, of course, may be a symbol on its own or a list.
In Emacs Lisp code, a save-excursion expression often occurs within the body of a
let expression. It looks like this:
(let varlist
(save-excursion body...))

3.11 Review
In the last few chapters we have introduced a macro and a fair number of functions
and special forms. Here they are described in brief, along with a few similar
functions that have not been mentioned yet.
eval-last-sexp
 45
Evaluate the last symbolic expression before the current location of
point. The value is printed in the echo area unless the function is
invoked with an argument; in that case, the output is printed in the
current buffer. This command is normally bound to C-xC-e.
defun Define function. This macro has up to five parts: the name, a template for the
arguments that will be passed to the function, documentation, an
optional interactive declaration, and the body of the definition.
For example, in Emacs the function definition of dired-unmark-allmarks
is as follows.
(defun dired-unmark-all-marks ()
"Remove all marks from all files in the Dired buffer."
(interactive)
(dired-unmark-all-files ?\r))

interactive
Declare to the interpreter that the function can be used interactively.
This special form may be followed by a string with one or more parts
that pass the information to the arguments of the function, in
sequence. These parts may also tell the interpreter to prompt for
information. Parts of the string are separated by newlines, ‘\n’.
Common code characters are:
b The name of an existing buffer. f The name
of an existing file.
p The numeric prefix argument. (Note that this p is lower
case.)
Section 3.11: Review

r Point and the mark, as two numeric arguments, small-

est first. This is the only code letter that specifies two
successive arguments rather than one.
See Section “Code Characters for ‘interactive’” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, for a complete list of code characters.
let Declare that a list of variables is for use within the body of the let and give them
an initial value, either nil or a specified value; then evaluate the rest of
the expressions in the body of the let and return the value of the last
one. Inside the body of the let, the Lisp interpreter does not see the
values of the variables of the same names that are bound outside of the
let. For example,
(let ((foo (buffer-name))
(bar (buffer-size)))
(message
46 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
"This buffer is %s and has %d characters." foo bar))

save-excursion
Record the values of point and the current buffer before evaluating the
body of this special form. Restore the value of point and buffer
afterward.
For example,
(message "We are %d characters into this buffer."
(- (point)
(save-excursion
(goto-char (point-min)) (point))))

if Evaluate the first argument to the function; if it is true, evaluate the

second argument; else evaluate the third argument, if there is one.
The if special form is called a conditional. There are other conditionals
in Emacs Lisp, but if is perhaps the most commonly used. For example,
(if (= 22 emacs-major-version)
(message "This is version 22 Emacs")
(message "This is not version 22 Emacs"))
<
>
<=
>= The < function tests whether its first argument is smaller than its second
argument. A corresponding function, >, tests whether the first
argument is greater than the second. Likewise, <= tests whether the
first argument is less than or equal to the second and >= tests whether
the first argument is greater than or equal to the second. In all cases,
both arguments must be numbers or markers (markers indicate
positions in buffers).
= The = function tests whether two arguments, both numbers or
markers, are equal.
equal
eq Test whether two objects are the same. equal uses one meaning of the
word “same” and eq uses another: equal returns true if the two objects
have a similar structure and contents, such as two copies of the same
book. On the other hand, eq, returns true if both arguments are
actually the same object.
string< string-lessp
string= string-equal
The string-lessp function tests whether its first argument is smaller
than the second argument. A shorter, alternative name for the same
function (a defalias) is string<.
 47
The arguments to string-lessp must be strings or symbols; the ordering
is lexicographic, so case is significant. The print names of symbols are
used instead of the symbols themselves.
An empty string, ‘""’, a string with no characters in it, is smaller than
any string of characters.
string-equal provides the corresponding test for equality. Its shorter,
alternative name is string=. There are no string test functions that
correspond to >, >=, or <=.

message Print a message in the echo area. The first argument is a string that can
contain ‘%s’, ‘%d’, or ‘%c’ to print the value of arguments that follow the
string. The argument used by ‘%s’ must be a string or a symbol; the
argument used by ‘%d’ must be a number. The argument used by ‘%c’
must be an ascii code number; it will be printed as the character with
that ascii code. (Various other %-sequences have not been mentioned.)
setq
set The setq special form sets the value of its first argument to the value of the
second argument. The first argument is automatically quoted by setq. It
does the same for succeeding pairs of arguments.
buffer-name
Without an argument, return the name of the buffer, as a string.
buffer-file-name
Without an argument, return the name of the file the buffer is visiting.
current-buffer
Return the buffer in which Emacs is active; it may not be the buffer
that is visible on the screen.
Section 3.12: Exercises

other-buffer
Return the most recently selected buffer (other than the buffer passed
to other-buffer as an argument and other than the current buffer).
switch-to-buffer
Select a buffer for Emacs to be active in and display it in the current
window so users can look at it. Usually bound to C-xb.
set-buffer
Switch Emacs’s attention to a buffer on which programs will run.
Don’t alter what the window is showing.
buffer-size
Return the number of characters in the current buffer.
48 Chapter 3: How To Write Function Definitions
point Return the value of the current position of the cursor, as an integer
counting the number of characters from the beginning of the buffer.
point-min Return the minimum permissible value of point in the current buffer.
This is 1, unless narrowing is in effect.
point-max Return the value of the maximum permissible value of point in the
current buffer. This is the end of the buffer, unless narrowing is in
effect.
3.12 Exercises
• Write a non-interactive function that doubles the value of its argument, a
number. Make that function interactive.
• Write a function that tests whether the current value of fill-column is greater
than the argument passed to the function, and if so, prints an appropriate
message.
 49
4 A Few Buffer-Related Functions
In this chapter we study in detail several of the functions used in GNU Emacs. This is
called a “walk-through”. These functions are used as examples of Lisp code, but are
not imaginary examples; with the exception of the first, simplified function
definition, these functions show the actual code used in GNU Emacs. You can learn a
great deal from these definitions. The functions described here are all related to
buffers. Later, we will study other functions.

4.1 Finding More Information

In this walk-through, I will describe each new function as we come to it, sometimes
in detail and sometimes briefly. If you are interested, you can get the full
documentation of any Emacs Lisp function at any time by typing C-hf and then the
name of the function (and then RET). Similarly, you can get the full documentation for
a variable by typing C-hv and then the name of the variable (and then RET).
Also, describe-function will tell you the location of the function definition.
Put point into the name of the file that contains the function and press the RET
key. In this case, RET means push-button rather than “return” or “enter”. Emacs will
take you directly to the function definition.
More generally, if you want to see a function in its original source file, you can use
the xref-find-definitions function to jump to it. xref-find-definitions works with a wide
variety of languages, not just Lisp, and C, and it works with non-programming text as
well. For example, xref-find-definitions will jump to the various nodes in the Texinfo
source file of this document (provided that you’ve run the etags utility to record all
the nodes in the manuals that come with Emacs; see Section “Create Tags Table” in
The GNU Emacs Manual).
To use the xref-find-definitions command, type M-. (i.e., press the period key while
holding down the META key, or else type the ESC key and then type the period key),
and then, at the prompt, type in the name of the function whose source code you
want to see, such as mark-whole-buffer, and then type RET. (If the command doesn’t
prompt, invoke it with an argument: C-uM-.; see Section 3.4 “Interactive Options”,
page 31.) Emacs will switch buffers and display the source code for the function on
your screen10. To switch back to your current buffer, type M-, or C-xbRET. (On some
keyboards, the META key is labeled ALT.)
Incidentally, the files that contain Lisp code are conventionally called libraries.
The metaphor is derived from that of a specialized library, such as a law library or an
engineering library, rather than a general library. Each library, or file, contains
functions that relate to a particular topic or activity, such as abbrev.el for handling
abbreviations and other typing shortcuts, and help.el for help. (Sometimes several
libraries provide code for a single activity, as the various rmail... files provide code
10 If instead of showing the source code for a Lisp function, Emacs asks you which tags
table to visit, invoke M-. from a buffer whose major mode is Emacs Lisp or Lisp
Interaction.
50 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
for reading electronic mail.) In The GNU Emacs Manual, you will see sentences
Section 4.2: A Simplified beginning-of-buffer Definition

such as “The C-hp command lets you search the standard Emacs Lisp libraries by
topic keywords.”

4.2 A Simplified beginning-of-buffer Definition

The beginning-of-buffer command is a good function to start with since you are likely
to be familiar with it and it is easy to understand. Used as an interactive command,
beginning-of-buffer moves the cursor to the beginning of the buffer, leaving the mark
at the previous position. It is generally bound to M-<.
In this section, we will discuss a shortened version of the function that shows
how it is most frequently used. This shortened function works as written, but it does
not contain the code for a complex option. In another section, we will describe the
entire function. (See Section 5.3 “Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer”, page
65.)
Before looking at the code, let’s consider what the function definition has to
contain: it must include an expression that makes the function interactive so it can
be called by typing M-xbeginning-of-buffer or by typing a keychord such as M-<; it
must include code to leave a mark at the original position in the buffer; and it must
include code to move the cursor to the beginning of the buffer.
Here is the complete text of the shortened version of the function:
(defun simplified-beginning-of-buffer ()
"Move point to the beginning of the buffer; leave mark at
previous position."
(interactive)
(push-mark)
(goto-char (point-min)))
Like all function definitions, this definition has five parts following the macro
defun:
1. The name: in this example, simplified-beginning-of-buffer.
2. A list of the arguments: in this example, an empty list, (),
3. The documentation string.
4. The interactive expression.
5. The body.
In this function definition, the argument list is empty; this means that this function
does not require any arguments. (When we look at the definition for the complete
function, we will see that it may be passed an optional argument.)
The interactive expression tells Emacs that the function is intended to be used
interactively. In this example, interactive does not have an argument because
simplified-beginning-of-buffer does not require one.
 51
The body of the function consists of the two lines:
(push-mark)
(goto-char (point-min))
The first of these lines is the expression, (push-mark). When this expression is
evaluated by the Lisp interpreter, it sets a mark at the current position of the cursor,
wherever that may be. The position of this mark is saved in the mark ring.
The next line is (goto-char(point-min)). This expression jumps the cursor to the
minimum point in the buffer, that is, to the beginning of the buffer (or to the
beginning of the accessible portion of the buffer if it is narrowed. See Chapter 6
“Narrowing and Widening”, page 73.)
The push-mark command sets a mark at the place where the cursor was located
before it was moved to the beginning of the buffer by the (goto-char(pointmin))
expression. Consequently, you can, if you wish, go back to where you were originally
by typing C-xC-x.
That is all there is to the function definition!
When you are reading code such as this and come upon an unfamiliar function,
such as goto-char, you can find out what it does by using the describe-function
command. To use this command, type C-hf and then type in the name of the function
and press RET. The describe-function command will print the function’s
documentation string in a *Help* window. For example, the documentation for goto-
char is:
Set point to POSITION, a number or marker.
Beginning of buffer is position (point-min), end is (point-max). The function’s one
argument is the desired position.
(The prompt for describe-function will offer you the symbol under or preceding the
cursor, so you can save typing by positioning the cursor right over or after the
function and then typing C-hfRET.)
The end-of-buffer function definition is written in the same way as the beginning-
of-buffer definition except that the body of the function contains the expression
(goto-char(point-max)) in place of (goto-char(point-min)).

4.3 The Definition of mark-whole-buffer

The mark-whole-buffer function is no harder to understand than the simplified-
beginning-of-buffer function. In this case, however, we will look at the complete
function, not a shortened version.
The mark-whole-buffer function is not as commonly used as the beginning-of-
buffer function, but is useful nonetheless: it marks a whole buffer as a region by
putting point at the beginning and a mark at the end of the buffer. It is generally
bound to C-xh.
Section 4.3: The Definition of mark-whole-buffer

In GNU Emacs 22, the code for the complete function looks like this:
52 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
(defun mark-whole-buffer ()
"Put point at beginning and mark at end of buffer. You probably should not use
this function in Lisp programs; it is usually a mistake for a Lisp function to use any
subroutine that uses or sets the mark."
(interactive)
(push-mark (point))
(push-mark (point-max) nil t)
(goto-char (point-min)))
Like all other functions, the mark-whole-buffer function fits into the template for a
function definition. The template looks like this:
(defun name-of-function (argument-list)
"documentation..." (interactive-expression...)
body...)
Here is how the function works: the name of the function is mark-whole-buffer; it
is followed by an empty argument list, ‘()’, which means that the function does not
require arguments. The documentation comes next.
The next line is an (interactive) expression that tells Emacs that the function will
be used interactively. These details are similar to the simplified-beginningof-buffer
function described in the previous section.

4.3.1 Body of mark-whole-buffer

The body of the mark-whole-buffer function consists of three lines of code:
(push-mark (point))
(push-mark (point-max) nil t)
(goto-char (point-min))
The first of these lines is the expression, (push-mark(point)).
This line does exactly the same job as the first line of the body of the simplified-
beginning-of-buffer function, which is written (push-mark). In both cases, the Lisp
interpreter sets a mark at the current position of the cursor.
I don’t know why the expression in mark-whole-buffer is written (push-mark
(point)) and the expression in beginning-of-buffer is written (push-mark). Perhaps
whoever wrote the code did not know that the arguments for push-mark are optional
and that if push-mark is not passed an argument, the function automatically sets
mark at the location of point by default. Or perhaps the expression was written so as
to parallel the structure of the next line. In any case, the line causes Emacs to
determine the position of point and set a mark there.
In earlier versions of GNU Emacs, the next line of mark-whole-buffer was (push-
mark(point-max)). This expression sets a mark at the point in the buffer that has the
highest number. This will be the end of the buffer (or, if the buffer is narrowed, the
end of the accessible portion of the buffer. See Chapter 6 “Narrowing and Widening”,
page 73, for more about narrowing.) After this mark has been set, the previous mark,
the one set at point, is no longer set, but Emacs remembers its position, just as all
 53
other recent marks are always remembered. This means that you can, if you wish, go
back to that position by typing C-uC-SPC twice.
In GNU Emacs 22, the (point-max) is slightly more complicated. The line reads
(push-mark (point-max) nil t)
The expression works nearly the same as before. It sets a mark at the highest
numbered place in the buffer that it can. However, in this version, push-mark has two
additional arguments. The second argument to push-mark is nil. This tells the
function it should display a message that says “Mark set” when it pushes the mark.
The third argument is t. This tells push-mark to activate the mark when Transient
Mark mode is turned on. Transient Mark mode highlights the currently active region.
It is often turned off.
Finally, the last line of the function is (goto-char(point-min))). This is written
exactly the same way as it is written in beginning-of-buffer. The expression moves the
cursor to the minimum point in the buffer, that is, to the beginning of the buffer (or
to the beginning of the accessible portion of the buffer). As a result of this, point is
placed at the beginning of the buffer and mark is set at the end of the buffer. The
whole buffer is, therefore, the region.

4.4 The Definition of append-to-buffer

The append-to-buffer command is more complex than the mark-whole-buffer
command. What it does is copy the region (that is, the part of the buffer between
point and mark) from the current buffer to a specified buffer.
The append-to-buffer command uses the insert-buffer-substring function to copy
the region. insert-buffer-substring is described by its name: it takes a substring from a
buffer, and inserts it into another buffer.
Most of append-to-buffer is concerned with setting up the conditions for insert-
buffer-substring to work: the code must specify both the buffer to which the text will
go, the window it comes from and goes to, and the region that will be copied.
Section 4.4: The Definition of append-to-buffer

Here is a possible implementation of the function:

(defun append-to-buffer (buffer start end)
"Append to specified buffer the text of the region. It is inserted into
that buffer before its point.

When calling from a program, give three arguments:

BUFFER (or buffer name), START and END.
START and END specify the portion of the current buffer to be copied."
(interactive
(list (read-buffer "Append to buffer: " (other-buffer
(current-buffer) t))
(region-beginning) (region-end)))
54 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
(let ((oldbuf (current-buffer)))
(save-excursion
(let* ((append-to (get-buffer-create buffer)) (windows (get-buffer-
window-list append-to t t)) point)
(set-buffer append-to)
(setq point (point))
(barf-if-buffer-read-only)
(insert-buffer-substring oldbuf start end)
(dolist (window windows)
(when (= (window-point window) point)
(set-window-point window (point))))))))
The function can be understood by looking at it as a series of filled-in templates.
The outermost template is for the function definition. In this function, it looks
like this (with several slots filled in):
(defun append-to-buffer (buffer start end)
"documentation..."
(interactive ...) body...)
The first line of the function includes its name and three arguments. The
arguments are the buffer to which the text will be copied, and the start and end of the
region in the current buffer that will be copied.
The next part of the function is the documentation, which is clear and complete.
As is conventional, the three arguments are written in upper case so you will notice
them easily. Even better, they are described in the same order as in the argument list.
Note that the documentation distinguishes between a buffer and its name. (The
function can handle either.)

4.4.1 The append-to-buffer Interactive Expression

Since the append-to-buffer function will be used interactively, the function must have
an interactive expression. (For a review of interactive, see Section 3.3 “Making a
Function Interactive”, page 29.) The expression reads as follows:
(interactive
(list (read-buffer
"Append to buffer: "
(other-buffer (current-buffer) t))
(region-beginning)
(region-end)))
This expression is not one with letters standing for parts, as described earlier.
Instead, it starts a list with these parts:
The first part of the list is an expression to read the name of a buffer and return it
as a string. That is read-buffer. The function requires a prompt as its first argument,
‘"Appendtobuffer:"’. Its second argument tells the command what value to provide if
you don’t specify anything.
 55
In this case that second argument is an expression containing the function other-
buffer, an exception, and a ‘t’, standing for true.
The first argument to other-buffer, the exception, is yet another function, current-
buffer. That is not going to be returned. The second argument is the symbol for true,
t. That tells other-buffer that it may show visible buffers (except in this case, it will
not show the current buffer, which makes sense).
The expression looks like this:
(other-buffer (current-buffer) t)
The second and third arguments to the list expression are
(region-beginning) and (region-end). These two functions specify the beginning and
end of the text to be appended.
Originally, the command used the letters ‘B’ and ‘r’. The whole interactive
expression looked like this:
(interactive "BAppend to buffer: \nr")
But when that was done, the default value of the buffer switched to was invisible.
That was not wanted.
(The prompt was separated from the second argument with a newline, ‘\n’. It was
followed by an ‘r’ that told Emacs to bind the two arguments that follow the symbol
buffer in the function’s argument list (that is, start and end) to the values of point and
mark. That argument worked fine.)

4.4.2 The Body of append-to-buffer

The body of the append-to-buffer function begins with let.
As we have seen before (see Section 3.6 “let”, page 33), the purpose of a let
expression is to create and give initial values to one or more variables that will only
be used within the body of the let. This means that such a variable will not be
confused with any variable of the same name outside the let expression.
We can see how the let expression fits into the function as a whole by showing a
template for append-to-buffer with the let expression in outline:
(defun append-to-buffer (buffer start end)
"documentation..."
(interactive ...)
(let ((variable value)) body...))
Section 4.4: The Definition of append-to-buffer

The let expression has three elements:

1. The symbol let;
2. A varlist containing, in this case, a single two-element list, (variablevalue);
3. The body of the let expression.
In the append-to-buffer function, the varlist looks like this:
(oldbuf (current-buffer))
56 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
In this part of the let expression, the one variable, oldbuf, is bound to the value
returned by the (current-buffer) expression. The variable, oldbuf, is used to keep track
of the buffer in which you are working and from which you will copy.
The element or elements of a varlist are surrounded by a set of parentheses so
the Lisp interpreter can distinguish the varlist from the body of the let. As a
consequence, the two-element list within the varlist is surrounded by a
circumscribing set of parentheses. The line looks like this:
(let ((oldbuf (current-buffer)))
... )
The two parentheses before oldbuf might surprise you if you did not realize that the
first parenthesis before oldbuf marks the boundary of the varlist and the second
parenthesis marks the beginning of the two-element list, (oldbuf (current-buffer)).

4.4.3 save-excursion in append-to-buffer

The body of the let expression in append-to-buffer consists of a save-excursion
expression.
The save-excursion function saves the location of point, and restores it to that
position after the expressions in the body of the save-excursion complete execution.
In addition, save-excursion keeps track of the original buffer, and restores it. This is
how save-excursion is used in append-to-buffer.
Incidentally, it is worth noting here that a Lisp function is normally formatted so
that everything that is enclosed in a multi-line spread is indented more to the right
than the first symbol. In this function definition, the let is indented more than the
defun, and the save-excursion is indented more than the let, like this:
(defun ...
...
...
(let...
(save-excursion ...
This formatting convention makes it easy to see that the lines in the body of the save-
excursion are enclosed by the parentheses associated with save-excursion, just as the
save-excursion itself is enclosed by the parentheses associated with the let:
(let ((oldbuf (current-buffer))) (save-
excursion ...
(set-buffer ...)
(insert-buffer-substring oldbuf start end)
...))
The use of the save-excursion function can be viewed as a process of filling in the
slots of a template:
(save-excursion first-expression-in-body second-
expression-in-body
...
last-expression-in-body)
 57
In this function, the body of the save-excursion contains only one expression, the let*
expression. You know about a let function. The let* function is different. It enables
Emacs to set each variable in its varlist in sequence, one after another; such that
variables in the latter part of the varlist can make use of the values to which Emacs
set variables earlier in the varlist.
Looking at the let* expression in append-to-buffer:
(let* ((append-to (get-buffer-create buffer)) (windows (get-buffer-
window-list append-to t t)) point)
BODY...)
we see that append-to is bound to the value returned
by the (get-buffer-createbuffer). On the next line, append-to is used as an
argument to get-buffer-window-list; this would not be possible with the let
expression. Note that point is automatically bound to nil, the same way as it would be
done in the let statement.
Now let’s focus on the functions set-buffer and insert-buffer-substring in the body
of the let* expression.
In the old days, the set-buffer expression was simply
(set-buffer (get-buffer-create buffer)) but now it is
(set-buffer append-to)
This is because append-to was bound to (get-buffer-createbuffer) earlier on in the let*
expression.
The append-to-buffer function definition inserts text from the buffer in which you
are currently to a named buffer. It happens that insert-buffer-substring does just the
reverse—it copies text from another buffer to the current buffer—that is why the
append-to-buffer definition starts out with a let that binds the local symbol oldbuf to
the value returned by current-buffer.
Section 4.5: Review

The insert-buffer-substring expression looks like this:

(insert-buffer-substring oldbuf start end)
The insert-buffer-substring function copies a string from the buffer specified as its
first argument and inserts the string into the present buffer. In this case, the
argument to insert-buffer-substring is the value of the variable created and bound by
the let, namely the value of oldbuf, which was the current buffer when you gave the
append-to-buffer command.
After insert-buffer-substring has done its work, save-excursion will restore the
action to the original buffer and append-to-buffer will have done its job.
Written in skeletal form, the workings of the body look like this:
(let (bind-oldbuf-to-value-of-current-buffer)
(save-excursion ; Keep track of buffer. change-buffer insert-substring-
from-oldbuf-into-buffer)
58 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
change-back-to-original-buffer-when-finished
let-the-local-meaning-of-oldbuf-disappear-when-finished
In summary, append-to-buffer works as follows: it saves the value of the current
buffer in the variable called oldbuf. It gets the new buffer (creating one if need be)
and switches Emacs’s attention to it. Using the value of oldbuf, it inserts the region of
text from the old buffer into the new buffer; and then using save-excursion, it brings
you back to your original buffer.
In looking at append-to-buffer, you have explored a fairly complex function. It
shows how to use let and save-excursion, and how to change to and come back from
another buffer. Many function definitions use let, save-excursion, and set-buffer this
way.

4.5 Review
Here is a brief summary of the various functions discussed in this chapter.

describe-function describe-variable
Print the documentation for a function or variable. Conventionally
bound to C-hf and C-hv.

xref-find-definitions
Find the file containing the source for a function or variable and switch
buffers to it, positioning point at the beginning of the item.
Conventionally bound to M-. (that’s a period following the META key).

save-excursion
Save the location of point and restore its value after the arguments to
save-excursion have been evaluated. Also, remember the current buffer
and return to it.
push-mark Set mark at a location and record the value of the previous mark on the
mark ring. The mark is a location in the buffer that will keep its relative
position even if text is added to or removed from the buffer.
goto-char Set point to the location specified by the value of the argument, which can
be a number, a marker, or an expression that returns the number of a
position, such as (point-min).
insert-buffer-substring
Copy a region of text from a buffer that is passed to the function as an
argument and insert the region into the current buffer.
mark-whole-buffer
Mark the whole buffer as a region. Normally bound to C-xh.
 59
let* Declare a list of variables and give them an initial value; then evaluate the rest of
the expressions in the body of let*. The values of the variables can be
used to bind ensuing variables in the list.
set-buffer
Switch the attention of Emacs to another buffer, but do not change the
window being displayed. Used when the program rather than a human
is to work on a different buffer.
get-buffer-create get-buffer
Find a named buffer or create one if a buffer of that name does not
exist. The get-buffer function returns nil if the named buffer does not
exist.

4.6 Exercises
• Write your own simplified-end-of-buffer function definition; then test it to see
whether it works.
• Use if and get-buffer to write a function that prints a message telling you
whether a buffer exists.
• Using xref-find-definitions, find the source for the copy-to-buffer function.
Section 5.1: The Definition of copy-to-buffer

5 A Few More Complex Functions

In this chapter, we build on what we have learned in previous chapters by looking at
more complex functions. The copy-to-buffer function illustrates use of two save-
excursion expressions in one definition, while the insert-buffer function illustrates use
of an asterisk in an interactive expression, use of or, and the important distinction
between a name and the object to which the name refers.

5.1 The Definition of copy-to-buffer

After understanding how append-to-buffer works, it is easy to understand copy-to-
buffer. This function copies text into a buffer, but instead of adding to the second
buffer, it replaces all the previous text in the second buffer. The body of copy-to-buffer
looks like this,
...
(interactive "BCopy to buffer: \nr")
(let ((oldbuf (current-buffer)))
(with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create buffer)
(barf-if-buffer-read-only)
(erase-buffer)
(save-excursion
60 Chapter 4: A Few Buffer-Related Functions
(insert-buffer-substring oldbuf start end)))))
The copy-to-buffer function has a simpler interactive expression than append-to-
buffer.
The definition then says
(with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create buffer) ...
First, look at the earliest inner expression; that is evaluated first. That expression
starts with get-buffer-createbuffer. The function tells the computer to use the buffer
with the name specified as the one to which you are copying, or if such a buffer does
not exist, to create it. Then, the with-current-buffer function evaluates its body with
that buffer temporarily current, after which it will switch back to the buffer we are at
now11.
(This demonstrates another way to shift the computer’s attention but not the
user’s. The append-to-buffer function showed how to do the same with save-excursion
and set-buffer. with-current-buffer is a newer, and arguably easier, mechanism.)
The barf-if-buffer-read-only function sends you an error message saying the buffer
is read-only if you cannot modify it.
The next line has the erase-buffer function as its sole contents. That function
erases the buffer.
Finally, the last two lines contain the save-excursion expression with insert-buffer-
substring as its body. The insert-buffer-substring expression copies the text from the
buffer you are in (and you have not seen the

11 It is like calling (save-excursion(set-buffer...)...) in one go, though it is defined slightly

differently which interested reader can find out using describe-function.
 61
computer shift its attention, so you don’t know that that buffer is now called oldbuf).
Incidentally, this is what is meant by “replacement”. To replace text, Emacs erases
the previous text and then inserts new text.
In outline, the body of copy-to-buffer looks like this:
(let (bind-oldbuf-to-value-of-current-buffer)
(with-the-buffer-you-are-copying-to
(but-do-not-erase-or-copy-to-a-read-only-buffer)
(erase-buffer)
(save-excursion insert-substring-from-oldbuf-into-buffer)))

5.2 The Definition of insert-buffer

insert-buffer is yet another buffer-related function. This command copies another
buffer into the current buffer. It is the reverse of append-to-buffer or copy-to-buffer,
since they copy a region of text from the current buffer to another buffer.
Here is a discussion based on the original code. The code was simplified in 2003
and is harder to understand.
(See Section 5.2.6 “New Body for insert-buffer”, page 65, to see a discussion of the
new body.)
In addition, this code illustrates the use of interactive with a buffer that might be
read-only and the important distinction between the name of an object and the
object actually referred to.
Here is the earlier code:
(defun insert-buffer (buffer)
"Insert after point the contents of BUFFER.
Puts mark after the inserted text.
BUFFER may be a buffer or a buffer name."
(interactive "*bInsert buffer: ")
(or (bufferp buffer)
(setq buffer (get-buffer buffer)))
(let (start end newmark)
(save-excursion
(save-excursion
(set-buffer buffer)
(setq start (point-min) end (point-max)))
(insert-buffer-substring buffer start end)
(setq newmark (point)))
(push-mark newmark)))
Section 5.2: The Definition of insert-buffer

As with other function definitions, you can use a template to see an outline of the
function:
(defun insert-buffer (buffer)
"documentation..."
62 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions
(interactive "*bInsert buffer: ") body...)

5.2.1 The Interactive Expression in insert-buffer

In insert-buffer, the argument to the interactive declaration has two parts, an asterisk,
‘*’, and ‘bInsertbuffer: ’.

A Read-only Buffer
The asterisk is for the situation when the current buffer is a read-only buffer—a
buffer that cannot be modified. If insert-buffer is called when the current buffer is
read-only, a message to this effect is printed in the echo area and the terminal may
beep or blink at you; you will not be permitted to insert anything into current buffer.
The asterisk does not need to be followed by a newline to separate it from the next
argument.

‘b’ in an Interactive Expression

The next argument in the interactive expression starts with a lower case ‘b’. (This is
different from the code for append-to-buffer, which uses an upper-case ‘B’. See
Section 4.4 “The Definition of append-to-buffer”, page 52.) The lower-case ‘b’ tells the
Lisp interpreter that the argument for insert-buffer should be an existing buffer or
else its name. (The upper-case ‘B’ option provides for the possibility that the buffer
does not exist.) Emacs will prompt you for the name of the buffer, offering you a
default buffer, with name completion enabled. If the buffer does not exist, you
receive a message that says “No match”; your terminal may beep at you as well.
The new and simplified code generates a list for interactive. It uses the barf-if-
buffer-read-only and read-buffer functions with which we are already familiar and the
progn special form with which we are not. (It will be described later.)

5.2.2 The Body of the insert-buffer Function

The body of the insert-buffer function has two major parts: an or expression and a let
expression. The purpose of the or expression is to ensure that the argument buffer is
bound to a buffer and not just the name of a buffer. The body of the let expression
contains the code which copies the other buffer into the current buffer.
In outline, the two expressions fit into the insert-buffer function like this:
(defun insert-buffer (buffer)
"documentation..."
(interactive "*bInsert buffer: ") (or ... ...
(let (varlist) body-of-let... )
To understand how the or expression ensures that the argument buffer is bound
to a buffer and not to the name of a buffer, it is first necessary to understand the or
function.
Before doing this, let me rewrite this part of the function using if so that you can
see what is done in a manner that will be familiar.
 63
5.2.3 insert-buffer With an if Instead of an or
The job to be done is to make sure the value of buffer is a buffer itself and not the
name of a buffer. If the value is the name, then the buffer itself must be got.
You can imagine yourself at a conference where an usher is wandering around
holding a list with your name on it and looking for you: the usher is bound to your
name, not to you; but when the usher finds you and takes your arm, the usher
becomes bound to you.
In Lisp, you might describe this situation like this:
(if (not (holding-on-to-guest))
(find-and-take-arm-of-guest))
We want to do the same thing with a buffer—if we do not have the buffer itself,
we want to get it.
Using a predicate called bufferp that tells us whether we have a buffer (rather
than its name), we can write the code like this:
(if (not (bufferp buffer)) ; if-part
(setq buffer (get-buffer buffer))) ; then-part
Here, the true-or-false-test of the if expression is (not(bufferpbuffer)); and the then-
part is the expression (setqbuffer(get-bufferbuffer)).
In the test, the function bufferp returns true if its argument is a buffer—but false
if its argument is the name of the buffer. (The last character of the function name
bufferp is the character ‘p’; as we saw earlier, such use of ‘p’ is a convention that
indicates that the function is a predicate, which is a term that means that the
function will determine whether some property is true or false. See Section 1.8.4
“Using the Wrong Type Object as an Argument”, page 13.)
The function not precedes the expression (bufferpbuffer), so the true-orfalse-test
looks like this:
(not (bufferp buffer)) not is a function that returns true if its argument is false and
false if its argument is true. So if (bufferpbuffer) returns true, the not expression
returns false and vice versa.
Using this test, the if expression works as follows: when the value of the variable
buffer is actually a buffer rather than its name, the true-or-false-test returns false
Section 5.2: The Definition of insert-buffer

and the if expression does not evaluate the then-part. This is fine, since we do not
need to do anything to the variable buffer if it really is a buffer.
On the other hand, when the value of buffer is not a buffer itself, but the name of a
buffer, the true-or-false-test returns true and the then-part of the expression is
evaluated. In this case, the then-part is (setqbuffer(get-bufferbuffer)). This expression
uses the get-buffer function to return an actual buffer itself, given its name. The setq
then sets the variable buffer to the value of the buffer itself, replacing its previous
value (which was the name of the buffer).
64 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions
5.2.4 The or in the Body
The purpose of the or expression in the insert-buffer function is to ensure that the
argument buffer is bound to a buffer and not just to the name of a buffer. The
previous section shows how the job could have been done using an if expression.
However, the insert-buffer function actually uses or. To understand this, it is
necessary to understand how or works.
An or function can have any number of arguments. It evaluates each argument in
turn and returns the value of the first of its arguments that is not nil. Also, and this is
a crucial feature of or, it does not evaluate any subsequent arguments after returning
the first non-nil value.
The or expression looks like this:
(or (bufferp buffer)
(setq buffer (get-buffer buffer)))
The first argument to or is the expression (bufferpbuffer). This expression returns
true (a non-nil value) if the buffer is actually a buffer, and not just the name of a
buffer. In the or expression, if this is the case, the or expression returns this true
value and does not evaluate the next expression—and this is fine with us, since we
do not want to do anything to the value of buffer if it really is a buffer.
On the other hand, if the value of (bufferpbuffer) is nil, which it will be if the value
of buffer is the name of a buffer, the Lisp interpreter evaluates the next element of
the or expression. This is the expression (setqbuffer(get-buffer buffer)). This
expression returns a non-nil value, which is the value to which it sets the variable
buffer—and this value is a buffer itself, not the name of a buffer.
The result of all this is that the symbol buffer is always bound to a buffer itself
rather than to the name of a buffer. All this is necessary because the set-buffer
function in a following line only works with a buffer itself, not with the name to a
buffer.
Incidentally, using or, the situation with the usher would be written like this:
(or (holding-on-to-guest) (find-and-take-arm-of-guest))

5.2.5 The let Expression in insert-buffer

After ensuring that the variable buffer refers to a buffer itself and not just to the
name of a buffer, the insert-buffer function continues with a let expression. This
specifies three local variables, start, end, and newmark and binds them to the initial
value nil. These variables are used inside the remainder of the let and temporarily
hide any other occurrence of variables of the same name in Emacs until the end of
the let.
The body of the let contains two save-excursion expressions. First, we will look at
the inner save-excursion expression in detail. The expression looks like this:
(save-excursion
(set-buffer buffer)
(setq start (point-min) end (point-max)))
 65
The expression (set-bufferbuffer) changes Emacs’s attention from the current buffer
to the one from which the text will copied. In that buffer, the variables start and end
are set to the beginning and end of the buffer, using the commands point-min and
point-max. Note that we have here an illustration of how setq is able to set two
variables in the same expression. The first argument of setq is set to the value of its
second, and its third argument is set to the value of its fourth.
After the body of the inner save-excursion is evaluated, the save-excursion restores
the original buffer, but start and end remain set to the values of the beginning and
end of the buffer from which the text will be copied.
The outer save-excursion expression looks like this:
(save-excursion
(inner-save-excursion-expression
(go-to-new-buffer-and-set-start-and-end)
(insert-buffer-substring buffer start end)
(setq newmark (point)))
The insert-buffer-substring function copies the text into the current buffer from the
region indicated by start and end in buffer. Since the whole of the second buffer lies
between start and end, the whole of the second buffer is copied into the buffer you
are editing. Next, the value of point, which will be at the end of the inserted text, is
recorded in the variable newmark.
After the body of the outer save-excursion is evaluated, point is relocated to its
original place.
However, it is convenient to locate a mark at the end of the newly inserted text
and locate point at its beginning. The newmark variable records the end of the
inserted text. In the last line of the let expression, the (push-marknewmark)
expression function sets a mark to this location. (The previous location of the mark
is still accessible; it is recorded on the mark ring and you can go back to it with C-u
C-SPC.) Meanwhile, point is located at the beginning of the inserted text, which is
where it was before you called the insert function, the position of which was saved
by the first save-excursion.
66 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions

The whole let expression looks like this:

(let (start end newmark)
(save-excursion
(save-excursion
(set-buffer buffer)
(setq start (point-min) end (point-max)))
(insert-buffer-substring buffer start end)
(setq newmark (point)))
(push-mark newmark))
Like the append-to-buffer function, the insert-buffer function uses let, save-
excursion, and set-buffer. In addition, the function illustrates one way to use or. All
these functions are building blocks that we will find and use again and again.

5.2.6 New Body for insert-buffer

The body in the GNU Emacs 22 version is more confusing than the original. It
consists of two expressions,
(push-mark
(save-excursion
(insert-buffer-substring (get-buffer buffer))
(point))) nil

except, and this is what confuses novices, very important work is done inside the
push-mark expression.
The get-buffer function returns a buffer with the name provided. You will note
that the function is not called get-buffer-create; it does not create a buffer if one does
not already exist. The buffer returned by get-buffer, an existing buffer, is passed to
insert-buffer-substring, which inserts the whole of the buffer (since you did not
specify anything else).
The location into which the buffer is inserted is recorded by push-mark. Then the
function returns nil, the value of its last command. Put another way, the insert-buffer
function exists only to produce a side effect, inserting another buffer, not to return
any value.

5.3 Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer

The basic structure of the beginning-of-buffer function has already been discussed.
(See Section 4.2 “A Simplified beginning-of-buffer Definition”, page 49.) This section
describes the complex part of the definition.
As previously described, when invoked without an argument, beginning-ofbuffer
moves the cursor to the beginning of the buffer (in truth, the beginning of the
accessible portion of the buffer), leaving the mark at the previous position. However,
when the command is invoked with a number between one and ten, the function
considers that number to be a fraction of the length of the buffer, measured in tenths,
Section 5.3: Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer 67

and Emacs moves the cursor that fraction of the way from the beginning of the
buffer. Thus, you can either call this function with the key command M-<, which will
move the cursor to the beginning of the buffer, or with a key command such as C-
u7M-< which will move the cursor to a point 70% of the way through the buffer. If a
number bigger than ten is used for the argument, it moves to the end of the buffer.
The beginning-of-buffer function can be called with or without an argument. The
use of the argument is optional.

5.3.1 Optional Arguments

Unless told otherwise, Lisp expects that a function with an argument in its function
definition will be called with a value for that argument. If that does not happen, you
get an error and a message that says ‘Wrongnumberofarguments’.
However, optional arguments are a feature of Lisp: a particular keyword is used to
tell the Lisp interpreter that an argument is optional. The keyword is &optional. (The
‘&’ in front of ‘optional’ is part of the keyword.) In a function definition, if an
argument follows the keyword &optional, no value need be passed to that argument
when the function is called.
The first line of the function definition of beginning-of-buffer therefore looks like
this:
(defun beginning-of-buffer (&optional arg)
68 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions

In outline, the whole function looks like this:

(defun beginning-of-buffer (&optional arg)
"documentation..."
(interactive "P")
(or (is-the-argument-a-cons-cell arg)
(and are-both-transient-mark-mode-and-mark-active-true) (push-mark))
(let (determine-size-and-set-it)
(goto-char
(if-there-is-an-argument figure-
out-where-to-go else-go-to (point-
min)))) do-nicety

The function is similar to the simplified-beginning-of-buffer function except that

the interactive expression has "P" as an argument and the goto-char function is
followed by an if-then-else expression that figures out where to put the cursor if
there is an argument that is not a cons cell.
(Since I do not explain a cons cell for many more chapters, please consider
ignoring the function consp. See Chapter 9 “How Lists are Implemented”, page 108,
and Section “Cons Cell and List Types” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)

The "P" in the interactive expression tells Emacs to pass a prefix argument, if
there is one, to the function in raw form. A prefix argument is made by typing the
META key followed by a number, or by typing C-u and then a number. (If you don’t
type a number, C-u defaults to a cons cell with a 4. A lowercase "p" in the interactive
expression causes the function to convert a prefix arg to a number.)
The true-or-false-test of the if expression looks complex, but it is not: it checks
whether arg has a value that is not nil and whether it is a cons cell. (That is what
consp does; it checks whether its argument is a cons cell.) If arg has a value that is
not nil (and is not a cons cell), which will be the case if beginning-ofbuffer is called
with a numeric argument, then this true-or-false-test will return true and the then-
part of the if expression will be evaluated. On the other hand, if beginning-of-buffer is
not called with an argument, the value of arg will be nil and the else-part of the if
expression will be evaluated. The else-part is simply point-min, and when this is the
outcome, the whole goto-char expression is
(goto-char(point-min)), which is how we saw the beginning-of-buffer function in its
simplified form.

5.3.2 beginning-of-buffer with an Argument

When beginning-of-buffer is called with an argument, an expression is evaluated
which calculates what value to pass to goto-char. This expression is rather
Section 5.3: Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer 69

complicated at first sight. It includes an inner if expression and much arithmetic. It

looks like this:
(if (> (buffer-size) 10000)
;; Avoid overflow for large buffer sizes!
(* (prefix-numeric-value arg)
(/ size 10))
(/
(+ 10
(* size
(prefix-numeric-value arg)))
10))
Like other complex-looking expressions, the conditional expression within
beginning-of-buffer can be disentangled by looking at it as parts of a template, in this
case, the template for an if-then-else expression. In skeletal form, the expression
looks like this:
(if (buffer-is-large divide-buffer-size-by-10-and-multiply-by-arg
else-use-alternate-calculation
The true-or-false-test of this inner if expression checks the size of the buffer. The
reason for this is that the old version 18 Emacs used numbers that are no bigger
than eight million or so and in the computation that followed, the programmer
feared that Emacs might try to use over-large numbers if the buffer were large. The
term “overflow”, mentioned in the comment, means numbers that are over large.
More recent versions of Emacs use larger numbers, but this code has not been
touched, if only because people now look at buffers that are far, far larger than ever
before.
There are two cases: if the buffer is large and if it is not.

What happens in a large buffer

In beginning-of-buffer, the inner if expression tests whether the size of the buffer is
greater than 10,000 characters. To do this, it uses the > function and the
computation of size that comes from the let expression.
In the old days, the function buffer-size was used. Not only was that function
called several times, it gave the size of the whole buffer, not the accessible part. The
computation makes much more sense when it handles just the accessible part. (See
Chapter 6 “Narrowing and Widening”, page 73, for more information on focusing
attention to an accessible part.) The line looks like this:
(if (> size 10000)
When the buffer is large, the then-part of the if expression is evaluated. It reads like
this (after formatting for easy reading):
(*
(prefix-numeric-value arg)
(/ size 10))
70 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions

This expression is a multiplication, with two arguments to the function *.

The first argument is (prefix-numeric-valuearg). When "P" is used as the argument
for interactive, the value passed to the function as its argument is passed a raw prefix
argument, and not a number. (It is a number in a list.) To perform the arithmetic, a
conversion is necessary, and prefix-numeric-value does the job.
The second argument is (/size10). This expression divides the numeric value by
ten—the numeric value of the size of the accessible portion of the buffer. This
produces a number that tells how many characters make up one tenth of the buffer
size. (In Lisp, / is used for division, just as * is used for multiplication.)
In the multiplication expression as a whole, this amount is multiplied by the
value of the prefix argument—the multiplication looks like this:
(* numeric-value-of-prefix-arg number-of-characters-in-one-tenth-of-the-accessible-buffer)
If, for example, the prefix argument is ‘7’, the one-tenth value will be multiplied by 7
to give a position 70% of the way through.
The result of all this is that if the accessible portion of the buffer is large, the goto-
char expression reads like this:
(goto-char (* (prefix-numeric-value arg)
(/ size 10))) This puts
the cursor where we want it.

What happens in a small buffer

If the buffer contains fewer than 10,000 characters, a slightly different computation
is performed. You might think this is not necessary, since the first computation could
do the job. However, in a small buffer, the first method may not put the cursor on
exactly the desired line; the second method does a better job.
The code looks like this:
(/ (+ 10 (* size (prefix-numeric-value arg))) 10)
This is code in which you figure out what happens by discovering how the functions
are embedded in parentheses. It is easier to read if you reformat it with each
expression indented more deeply than its enclosing expression:
(/
(+ 10
(* size
(prefix-numeric-value arg)))
10)
Looking at parentheses, we see that the innermost operation is (prefix-
numericvaluearg), which converts the raw argument to a number. In the following
expression, this number is multiplied by the size of the accessible portion of the
buffer:
(* size (prefix-numeric-value arg))
This multiplication creates a number that may be larger than the size of the buffer—
seven times larger if the argument is 7, for example. Ten is then added to this
Section 5.3: Complete Definition of beginning-of-buffer 71

number and finally the large number is divided by ten to provide a value that is one
character larger than the percentage position in the buffer.
The number that results from all this is passed to goto-char and the cursor is
moved to that point.

5.3.3 The Complete beginning-of-buffer

Here is the complete text of the beginning-of-buffer function:

(defun beginning-of-buffer (&optional arg)

"Move point to the beginning of the buffer; leave mark
at previous position. With \\[universal-argument] prefix,
do not set mark at previous position. With numeric arg N,
put point N/10 of the way from the beginning.

If the buffer is narrowed, this command uses the

beginning and size of the accessible part of the
buffer.

Don't use this command in Lisp programs! \(goto-

char (point-min)) is faster and avoids clobbering the
mark."
(interactive "P") (or
(consp arg)
(and transient-mark-mode mark-active) (push-mark))
(let ((size (- (point-max) (point-min))))
(goto-char (if (and arg (not (consp arg)))
(+ (point-min)
(if (> size 10000)
;; Avoid overflow for large buffer sizes!
(* (prefix-numeric-value arg)
(/ size 10))
(/ (+ 10 (* size (prefix-numeric-value arg)))
10)))
(point-min))))
(if (and arg (not (consp arg))) (forward-line 1)))
Except for two small points, the previous discussion shows how this function works.
The first point deals with a detail in the documentation string, and the second point
concerns the last line of the function.
72 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions
Section 5.4: Review

In the documentation string, there is reference to an expression:

\\[universal-argument]
A ‘\\’ is used before the first square bracket of this expression. This ‘\\’ tells the Lisp
interpreter to substitute whatever key is currently bound to the ‘[...]’. In the case of
universal-argument, that is usually C-u, but it might be different. (See Section “Tips for
Documentation Strings” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more
information.)
Finally, the last line of the beginning-of-buffer command says to move point to the
beginning of the next line if the command is invoked with an argument:
(if (and arg (not (consp arg))) (forward-line 1))
This puts the cursor at the beginning of the first line after the appropriate tenths
position in the buffer. This is a flourish that means that the cursor is always located
at least the requested tenths of the way through the buffer, which is a nicety that is,
perhaps, not necessary, but which, if it did not occur, would be sure to draw
complaints. (The (not(consparg)) portion is so that if you specify the command with a
C-u, but without a number, that is to say, if the raw prefix argument is simply a cons
cell, the command does not put you at the beginning of the second line.)

5.4 Review
Here is a brief summary of some of the topics covered in this chapter.
or Evaluate each argument in sequence, and return the value of the first argument
that is not nil; if none return a value that is not nil, return nil. In brief,
return the first true value of the arguments; return a true value if one
or any of the others are true.
and Evaluate each argument in sequence, and if any are nil, return nil; if none are nil,
return the value of the last argument. In brief, return a true value only
if all the arguments are true; return a true value if one and each of the
others is true.
&optional A keyword used to indicate that an argument to a function definition is
optional; this means that the function can be evaluated without the
argument, if desired.
prefix-numeric-value
Convert the raw prefix argument produced by (interactive"P") to a
numeric value.
forward-line
Move point forward to the beginning of the next line, or if the
argument is greater than one, forward that many lines. If it can’t move
as far forward as it is supposed to, forward-line goes forward as far as it
 73
can and then returns a count of the number of additional lines it was
supposed to move but couldn’t.
erase-buffer
Delete the entire contents of the current buffer.
bufferp Return t if its argument is a buffer; otherwise return nil.

5.5 optional Argument Exercise

Write an interactive function with an optional argument that tests whether its
argument, a number, is greater than or equal to, or else, less than the value of fill-
column, and tells you which, in a message. However, if you do not pass an argument
to the function, use 56 as a default value.
74 Chapter 5: A Few More Complex Functions
Section 6.1: The save-restriction Special Form

6 Narrowing and Widening

Narrowing is a feature of Emacs that makes it possible for you to focus on a specific
part of a buffer, and work without accidentally changing other parts. Narrowing is
normally disabled since it can confuse novices.
With narrowing, the rest of a buffer is made invisible, as if it weren’t there. This is
an advantage if, for example, you want to replace a word in one part of a buffer but
not in another: you narrow to the part you want and the replacement is carried out
only in that section, not in the rest of the buffer. Searches will only work within a
narrowed region, not outside of one, so if you are fixing a part of a document, you
can keep yourself from accidentally finding parts you do not need to fix by
narrowing just to the region you want. (The key binding for narrow-to-region is C-
xnn.)
However, narrowing does make the rest of the buffer invisible, which can scare
people who inadvertently invoke narrowing and think they have deleted a part of
their file. Moreover, the undo command (which is usually bound to C-xu) does not
turn off narrowing (nor should it), so people can become quite desperate if they do
not know that they can return the rest of a buffer to visibility with the widen
command. (The key binding for widen is C-xnw.)
Narrowing is just as useful to the Lisp interpreter as to a human. Often, an Emacs
Lisp function is designed to work on just part of a buffer; or conversely, an Emacs
Lisp function needs to work on all of a buffer that has been narrowed. The what-line
function, for example, removes the narrowing from a buffer, if it has any narrowing
and when it has finished its job, restores the narrowing to what it was. On the other
hand, the count-lines function uses narrowing to restrict itself to just that portion of
the buffer in which it is interested and then restores the previous situation.

6.1 The save-restriction Special Form

In Emacs Lisp, you can use the save-restriction special form to keep track of whatever
narrowing is in effect, if any. When the Lisp interpreter meets with save-restriction, it
executes the code in the body of the save-restriction expression, and then undoes any
changes to narrowing that the code caused. If, for example, the buffer is narrowed
and the code that follows save-restriction gets rid of the narrowing, save-restriction
returns the buffer to its narrowed region afterwards. In the what-line command, any
narrowing the buffer may have is undone by the widen command that immediately
follows the save-restriction command. Any original narrowing is restored just before
the completion of the function.
 75
Chapter 6: Narrowing and Widening

The template for a save-restriction expression is simple:

(save-restriction body... )
The body of the save-restriction is one or more expressions that will be evaluated in
sequence by the Lisp interpreter.
Finally, a point to note: when you use both save-excursion and save-restriction, one
right after the other, you should use save-excursion outermost. If you write them in
reverse order, you may fail to record narrowing in the buffer to which Emacs
switches after calling save-excursion. Thus, when written together, save-excursion and
save-restriction should be written like this:
(save-excursion
(save-restriction body...))
In other circumstances, when not written together, the save-excursion and save-
restriction special forms must be written in the order appropriate to the function.
For example,
(save-restriction
(widen) (save-excursion
body...))

6.2 what-line
The what-line command tells you the number of the line in which the cursor is
located. The function illustrates the use of the save-restriction and save-excursion
commands. Here is the original text of the function:
(defun what-line ()
"Print the current line number (in the buffer) of point."
(interactive)
(save-restriction
(widen)
(save-excursion
(beginning-of-line) (message "Line
%d"
(1+ (count-lines 1 (point)))))))
(In modern versions of GNU Emacs, the what-line function has been expanded to
tell you your line number in a narrowed buffer as well as your line number in a
widened buffer. The modern version is more complex than the version shown here.
If you feel adventurous, you might want to look at it after figuring out how this
version works. You will probably need to use C-hf (describe-function). The newer
version uses a conditional to determine whether the buffer has been narrowed.
76
Also, the modern version of what-line uses line-number-at-pos, which among other
simple expressions, such as (goto-char(point-min)), moves point to the beginning of
the current line with (forward-line0) rather than beginning-ofline.)
Section 6.2: what-line

The what-line function as shown here has a documentation line and is interactive,
as you would expect. The next two lines use the functions save-restriction and widen.
The save-restriction special form notes whatever narrowing is in effect, if any, in
the current buffer and restores that narrowing after the code in the body of the save-
restriction has been evaluated.
The save-restriction special form is followed by widen. This function undoes any
narrowing the current buffer may have had when what-line was called. (The
narrowing that was there is the narrowing that save-restriction remembers.) This
widening makes it possible for the line counting commands to count from the
beginning of the buffer. Otherwise, they would have been limited to counting within
the accessible region. Any original narrowing is restored just before the completion
of the function by the save-restriction special form.
The call to widen is followed by save-excursion, which saves the location of the
cursor (i.e., of point), and restores it after the code in the body of the save-excursion
uses the beginning-of-line function to move point.
(Note that the (widen) expression comes between the save-restriction and save-
excursion special forms. When you write the two save-... expressions in sequence,
write save-excursion outermost.)
The last two lines of the what-line function are functions to count the number of
lines in the buffer and then print the number in the echo area.
(message "Line %d"
(1+ (count-lines 1 (point)))))))
The message function prints a one-line message at the bottom of the Emacs
screen. The first argument is inside of quotation marks and is printed as a string of
characters. However, it may contain a ‘%d’ expression to print a following argument.
‘%d’ prints the argument as a decimal, so the message will say something such as
‘Line243’.
Chapter 6: Narrowing and Widening

The number that is printed in place of the ‘%d’ is computed by the last line of the
function:
(1+ (count-lines 1 (point)))
What this does is count the lines from the first position of the buffer, indicated by the
1, up to (point), and then add one to that number. (The 1+ function adds one to its
argument.) We add one to it because line 2 has only one line before it, and count-lines
counts only the lines before the current line.
 77
After count-lines has done its job, and the message has been printed in the echo
area, the save-excursion restores point to its original position; and save-restriction
restores the original narrowing, if any.

6.3 Exercise with Narrowing

Write a function that will display the first 60 characters of the current buffer, even if
you have narrowed the buffer to its latter half so that the first line is inaccessible.
Restore point, mark, and narrowing. For this exercise, you need to use a whole
potpourri of functions, including save-restriction, widen, goto-char, point-min,
message, and buffer-substring.
(buffer-substring is a previously unmentioned function you will have to
investigate yourself; or perhaps you will have to use buffer-substring-no-properties or
filter-buffer-substring . . ., yet other functions. Text properties are a feature otherwise
not discussed here. See Section “Text Properties” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.)
Additionally, do you really need goto-char or point-min? Or can you write the
function without them?
Section 7.1: car and cdr

7 car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions

In Lisp, car, cdr, and cons are fundamental functions. The cons function is used to
construct lists, and the car and cdr functions are used to take them apart.
In the walk through of the copy-region-as-kill function, we will see cons as well as
two variants on cdr, namely, setcdr and nthcdr. (See Section 8.3 “copyregion-as-kill”,
page 93.)
The name of the cons function is not unreasonable: it is an abbreviation of the
word “construct”. The origins of the names for car and cdr, on the other hand, are
esoteric: car is an acronym from the phrase “Contents of the Address part of the
Register”; and cdr (pronounced “could-er”) is an acronym from the phrase “Contents
of the Decrement part of the Register”. These phrases refer to the IBM 704 computer
on which the original Lisp was developed.
The IBM 704 is a footnote in history, but these names are now beloved traditions
of Lisp.

7.1 car and cdr

The car of a list is, quite simply, the first item in the list. Thus the car of the list
(rosevioletdaisybuttercup) is rose.
If you are reading this in Info in GNU Emacs, you can see this by evaluating the
following:
(car '(rose violet daisy buttercup))
78
After evaluating the expression, rose will appear in the echo area.
car does not remove the first item from the list; it only reports what it is. After car
has been applied to a list, the list is still the same as it was. In the jargon, car is “non-
destructive”. This feature turns out to be important.
The cdr of a list is the rest of the list, that is, the cdr function returns the part of
the list that follows the first item. Thus, while the car of the list '(rose
violetdaisybuttercup) is rose, the rest of the list, the value returned by the cdr
function, is (violetdaisybuttercup).
You can see this by evaluating the following in the usual way:
(cdr '(rose violet daisy buttercup))
When you evaluate this, (violetdaisybuttercup) will appear in the echo area.
Like car, cdr does not remove any elements from the list—it just returns a report
of what the second and subsequent elements are.
Incidentally, in the example, the list of flowers is quoted. If it were not, the Lisp
interpreter would try to evaluate the list by calling rose as a function. In this
example, we do not want to do that.
For operating on lists, the names first and rest would make more sense than the
names car and cdr. Indeed, some programmers define first and rest as aliases for car
and cdr, then write first and rest in their code.
However, lists in Lisp are built using a lower-level structure known as “cons cells”
(see Chapter 9 “List Implementation”, page 108), in which there is no such thing as
“first” or “rest”, and the car and the cdr are symmetrical. Lisp does not
 79
try to hide the existence of cons cells, and programs do use them for things other
than lists. For this reason, the names are helpful for reminding programmers that car
and cdr are in fact symmetrical, despite the asymmetrical way they are used in lists.
When car and cdr are applied to a list made up of symbols, such as the list
(pinefiroakmaple), the element of the list returned by the function car is the symbol
pine without any parentheses around it. pine is the first element in the list. However,
the cdr of the list is a list itself, (firoakmaple), as you can see by evaluating the
following expressions in the usual way:
(car '(pine fir oak maple))

(cdr '(pine fir oak maple))

On the other hand, in a list of lists, the first element is itself a list. car returns this
first element as a list. For example, the following list contains three sub-lists, a list of
carnivores, a list of herbivores and a list of sea mammals:
(car '((lion tiger cheetah)
(gazelle antelope zebra)
(whale dolphin seal)))
In this example, the first element or car of the list is the list of carnivores, (lion
tigercheetah), and the rest of the list is ((gazelleantelopezebra)(whale dolphinseal)).
(cdr '((lion tiger cheetah)
(gazelle antelope zebra)
(whale dolphin seal)))
It is worth saying again that car and cdr are non-destructive—that is, they do not
modify or change lists to which they are applied. This is very important for how they
are used.
Also, in the first chapter, in the discussion about atoms, I said that in Lisp, certain
kinds of atom, such as an array, can be separated into parts; but the mechanism for
doing this is different from the mechanism for splitting a list. As far as Lisp is
concerned, the atoms of a list are unsplittable. (See Section 1.1.1 “Lisp Atoms”, page
1.) The car and cdr functions are used for splitting lists and are considered
fundamental to Lisp. Since they cannot split or gain access to the parts of an array, an
array is considered an atom. Conversely, the other fundamental function, cons, can
put together or construct a list, but not an array. (Arrays are handled by array-
specific functions. See Section “Arrays” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)

7.2 cons
The cons function constructs lists; it is the inverse of car and cdr. For example, cons
can be used to make a four element list from the three element list, (firoak maple):
(cons 'pine '(fir oak maple))
Section 7.2: cons

After evaluating this list, you will see

80 Chapter 7: car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions
(pine fir oak maple) appear in the echo area. cons causes the creation of a new list
in which the element is followed by the elements of the original list.
We often say that cons puts a new element at the beginning of a list, or that it
attaches or pushes elements onto the list, but this phrasing can be misleading, since
cons does not change an existing list, but creates a new one.
Like car and cdr, cons is non-destructive.
cons must have a list to attach to. 12 You cannot start from absolutely nothing. If
you are building a list, you need to provide at least an empty list at the beginning.
Here is a series of cons expressions that build up a list of flowers. If you are reading
this in Info in GNU Emacs, you can evaluate each of the expressions in the usual way;
the value is printed in this text after ‘⇒’, which you may read as “evaluates to”.
(cons 'buttercup ())
⇒ (buttercup)

(cons 'daisy '(buttercup))

⇒ (daisy buttercup)

(cons 'violet '(daisy buttercup))

⇒ (violet daisy buttercup)

(cons 'rose '(violet daisy buttercup))

⇒ (rose violet daisy buttercup)
In the first example, the empty list is shown as () and a list made up of buttercup
followed by the empty list is constructed. As you can see, the empty list is not shown
in the list that was constructed. All that you see is (buttercup). The empty list is not
counted as an element of a list because there is nothing in an empty list. Generally
speaking, an empty list is invisible.
The second example, (cons'daisy'(buttercup)) constructs a new, two element list by
putting daisy in front of buttercup; and the third example constructs a three element
list by putting violet in front of daisy and buttercup.

7.2.1 Find the Length of a List: length

You can find out how many elements there are in a list by using the Lisp function
length, as in the following examples:
(length '(buttercup))
⇒1

(length '(daisy buttercup))

⇒2
(length (cons 'violet '(daisy buttercup)))
⇒3

12 Actually, you can cons an element to an atom to produce a dotted pair. Dotted pairs
are not discussed here; see Section “Dotted Pair Notation” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.
 81
In the third example, the cons function is used to construct a three element list which
is then passed to the length function as its argument.
We can also use length to count the number of elements in an empty list:
(length ())
⇒0
As you would expect, the number of elements in an empty list is zero.
An interesting experiment is to find out what happens if you try to find the length
of no list at all; that is, if you try to call length without giving it an argument, not even
an empty list:
(length )
What you see, if you evaluate this, is the error message
Lisp error: (wrong-number-of-arguments length 0)
This means that the function receives the wrong number of arguments, zero, when it
expects some other number of arguments. In this case, one argument is expected,
the argument being a list whose length the function is measuring. (Note that one list
is one argument, even if the list has many elements inside it.)
The part of the error message that says ‘length’ is the name of the function.

7.3 nthcdr
The nthcdr function is associated with the cdr function. What it does is take the cdr of
a list repeatedly.
If you take the cdr of the list (pinefiroakmaple), you will be returned the list
(firoakmaple). If you repeat this on what was returned, you will be returned the list
(oakmaple). (Of course, repeated cdring on the original list will just give you the
original cdr since the function does not change the list. You need to evaluate the cdr
of the cdr and so on.) If you continue this, eventually you will be returned an empty
list, which in this case, instead of being shown as () is shown as nil.
For review, here is a series of repeated cdrs, the text following the ‘⇒’ shows what
is returned.
(cdr '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ (fir oak maple)

(cdr '(fir oak maple))

⇒ (oak maple)

(cdr '(oak maple))

⇒ (maple)

(cdr '(maple))
⇒ nil

(cdr 'nil) ⇒ nil

Section 7.4: nth
82 Chapter 7: car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions
(cdr ())
⇒ nil
You can also do several cdrs without printing the values in between, like this:
(cdr (cdr '(pine fir oak maple)))
⇒ (oak maple)
In this example, the Lisp interpreter evaluates the innermost list first. The innermost
list is quoted, so it just passes the list as it is to the innermost cdr. This cdr passes a
list made up of the second and subsequent elements of the list to the outermost cdr,
which produces a list composed of the third and subsequent elements of the original
list. In this example, the cdr function is repeated and returns a list that consists of the
original list without its first two elements.
The nthcdr function does the same as repeating the call to cdr. In the following
example, the argument 2 is passed to the function nthcdr, along with the list, and the
value returned is the list without its first two items, which is exactly the same as
repeating cdr twice on the list:
(nthcdr 2 '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ (oak maple)
Using the original four element list, we can see what happens when various
numeric arguments are passed to nthcdr, including 0, 1, and 5:
;; Leave the list as it was.
(nthcdr 0 '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ (pine fir oak maple)

;; Return a copy without the first element.

(nthcdr 1 '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ (fir oak maple)

;; Return a copy of the list without three elements.

(nthcdr 3 '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ (maple)

;; Return a copy lacking all four elements.

(nthcdr 4 '(pine fir oak maple))
⇒ nil

;; Return a copy lacking all elements.

(nthcdr 5 '(pine fir oak maple)) ⇒ nil

7.4 nth
The nthcdr function takes the cdr of a list repeatedly. The nth function takes the car of
the result returned by nthcdr. It returns the Nth element of the list.
Thus, if it were not defined in C for speed, the definition of nth would be:
(defun nth (n list)
"Returns the Nth element of LIST.
 83
N counts from zero. If LIST is not that long, nil is returned."
(car (nthcdr n list)))
(Originally, nth was defined in Emacs Lisp in subr.el, but its definition was redone in
C in the 1980s.)
The nth function returns a single element of a list. This can be very convenient.
Note that the elements are numbered from zero, not one. That is to say, the first
element of a list, its car is the zeroth element. This zero-based counting often
bothers people who are accustomed to the first element in a list being number one,
which is one-based.
For example:
(nth 0 '("one" "two" "three")) ⇒ "one"

(nth 1 '("one" "two" "three"))

⇒ "two"
It is worth mentioning that nth, like nthcdr and cdr, does not change the original
list—the function is non-destructive. This is in sharp contrast to the setcar and setcdr
functions.

7.5 setcar
As you might guess from their names, the setcar and setcdr functions set the car or
the cdr of a list to a new value. They actually change the original list, unlike car and
cdr which leave the original list as it was. One way to find out how this works is to
experiment. We will start with the setcar function.
First, we can make a list and then set the value of a variable to the list, using the
setq special form. Because we intend to use setcar to change the list, this setq should
not use the quoted form '(antelopegiraffeliontiger), as that would yield a list that is
part of the program and bad things could happen if we tried to change part of the
program while running it. Generally speaking an Emacs Lisp program’s components
should be constant (or unchanged) while the program is running. So we instead
construct an animal list by using the list function, as follows:
(setq animals (list 'antelope 'giraffe 'lion 'tiger))
If you are reading this in Info inside of GNU Emacs, you can evaluate this expression
in the usual fashion, by positioning the cursor after the expression and typing C-x C-
e. (I’m doing this right here as I write this. This is one of the advantages of having the
interpreter built into the computing environment. Incidentally, when there is
nothing on the line after the final parentheses, such as a comment, point can be on
the next line. Thus, if your cursor is in the first column of the next line, you do not
need to move it. Indeed, Emacs permits any amount of white space after the final
parenthesis.)
Section 7.6: setcdr

When we evaluate the variable animals, we see that it is bound to the list
(antelopegiraffeliontiger):
84 Chapter 7: car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions
animals
⇒ (antelope giraffe lion tiger)
Put another way, the variable animals points to the list (antelopegiraffelion tiger).
Next, evaluate the function setcar while passing it two arguments, the variable
animals and the quoted symbol hippopotamus; this is done by writing the three
element list (setcaranimals'hippopotamus) and then evaluating it in the usual fashion:
(setcar animals 'hippopotamus)
After evaluating this expression, evaluate the variable animals again. You will see that
the list of animals has changed:
animals
⇒ (hippopotamus giraffe lion tiger)
The first element on the list, antelope is replaced by hippopotamus.
So we can see that setcar did not add a new element to the list as cons would
have; it replaced antelope with hippopotamus; it changed the list.

7.6 setcdr
The setcdr function is similar to the setcar function, except that the function replaces
the second and subsequent elements of a list rather than the first element.
(To see how to change the last element of a list, look ahead to “The kill-new
function”, page 97, which uses the nthcdr and setcdr functions.)
To see how this works, set the value of the variable to a list of domesticated
animals by evaluating the following expression:
(setq domesticated-animals (list 'horse 'cow 'sheep 'goat))
If you now evaluate the list, you will be returned the list (horsecowsheepgoat):
domesticated-animals
⇒ (horse cow sheep goat)
Next, evaluate setcdr with two arguments, the name of the variable which has a
list as its value, and the list to which the cdr of the first list will be set;
(setcdr domesticated-animals '(cat dog))
If you evaluate this expression, the list (catdog) will appear in the echo area. This is
the value returned by the function. The result we are interested in is the side effect,
which we can see by evaluating the variable domesticated-animals:
domesticated-animals
⇒ (horse cat dog)
Indeed, the list is changed from (horsecowsheepgoat) to (horsecatdog). The cdr of the
list is changed from (cowsheepgoat) to (catdog).
 85
7.7 Exercise
Construct a list of four birds by evaluating several expressions with cons. Find out
what happens when you cons a list onto itself. Replace the first element of the list of
four birds with a fish. Replace the rest of that list with a list of other fish.
86 Chapter 7: car, cdr, cons: Fundamental Functions
Section 8.1: zap-to-char

8 Cutting and Storing Text

Whenever you cut or clip text out of a buffer with a kill command in GNU Emacs, it is
stored in a list and you can bring it back with a yank command.
(The use of the word “kill” in Emacs for processes which specifically do not
destroy the values of the entities is an unfortunate historical accident. A much more
appropriate word would be “clip” since that is what the kill commands do; they clip
text out of a buffer and put it into storage from which it can be brought back. I have
often been tempted to replace globally all occurrences of “kill” in the Emacs sources
with “clip” and all occurrences of “killed” with “clipped”.)
When text is cut out of a buffer, it is stored on a list. Successive pieces of text are
stored on the list successively, so the list might look like this:
("a piece of text" "previous piece")
The function cons can be used to create a new list from a piece of text (an “atom”, to
use the jargon) and an existing list, like this:
(cons "another piece"
'("a piece of text" "previous piece"))
If you evaluate this expression, a list of three elements will appear in the echo area:
("another piece" "a piece of text" "previous piece")
With the car and nthcdr functions, you can retrieve whichever piece of text you
want. For example, in the following code, nthcdr1... returns the list with the first item
removed; and the car returns the first element of that remainder—the second
element of the original list:
(car (nthcdr 1 '("another piece"
"a piece of text"
"previous piece")))
⇒ "a piece of text"
The actual functions in Emacs are more complex than this, of course. The code
for cutting and retrieving text has to be written so that Emacs can figure out which
element in the list you want—the first, second, third, or whatever. In addition, when
you get to the end of the list, Emacs should give you the first element of the list,
rather than nothing at all.
The list that holds the pieces of text is called the kill ring. This chapter leads up to
a description of the kill ring and how it is used by first tracing how the zap-to-char
function works. This function calls a function that invokes a function that
manipulates the kill ring. Thus, before reaching the mountains, we climb the
foothills.
A subsequent chapter describes how text that is cut from the buffer is retrieved.
See Chapter 10 “Yanking Text Back”, page 113.
 87
8.1 zap-to-char
Let us look at the interactive zap-to-char function.
The zap-to-char function removes the text in the region between the location of
the cursor (i.e., of point) up to and including the next occurrence of a specified
character. The text that zap-to-char removes is put in the kill ring; and it can
88 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
be retrieved from the kill ring by typing C-y (yank). If the command is given an
argument, it removes text through that number of occurrences. Thus, if the cursor
were at the beginning of this sentence and the character were ‘s’, ‘Thus’ would be
removed. If the argument were two, ‘Thus,ifthecurs’ would be removed, up to and
including the ‘s’ in ‘cursor’.
If the specified character is not found, zap-to-char will say “Search failed”, tell you
the character you typed, and not remove any text.
In order to determine how much text to remove, zap-to-char uses a search
function. Searches are used extensively in code that manipulates text, and we will
focus attention on them as well as on the deletion command.
Here is the complete text of the version 22 implementation of the function:
(defun zap-to-char (arg char)
"Kill up to and including ARG'th occurrence of CHAR.
Case is ignored if `case-fold-search' is non-nil in the current buffer.
Goes backward if ARG is negative; error if CHAR not found."
(interactive "p\ncZap to char: ")
(if (char-table-p translation-table-for-input)
(setq char (or (aref translation-table-for-input char) char))) (kill-region (point) (progn
(search-forward (char-to-string char) nil nil arg)
(point))))
The documentation is thorough. You do need to know the jargon meaning of the
word “kill”.
The version 22 documentation string for zap-to-char uses ASCII grave accent and
apostrophe to quote a symbol, so it appears as ‘case-fold-search’. This quoting style
was inspired by 1970s-era displays in which grave accent and apostrophe were often
mirror images suitable for use as quotes. On most modern displays this is no longer
true, and when these two ASCII characters appear in documentation strings or
diagnostic message formats, Emacs typically transliterates them to curved quotes
(left and right single quotation marks), so that the abovequoted symbol appears as
‘case-fold-search’. Source-code strings can also simply use curved quotes directly.

8.1.1 The interactive Expression

Section 8.1: zap-to-char

The interactive expression in the zap-to-char command looks like this:

(interactive "p\ncZap to char: ")
The part within quotation marks, "p\ncZaptochar:", specifies two different things.
First, and most simply, is the ‘p’. This part is separated from the next part by a
newline, ‘\n’. The ‘p’ means that the first argument to the function will be passed the
value of a processed prefix. The prefix argument is passed by typing C-u and a
number, or M- and a number. If the function is called interactively without a prefix, 1
is passed to this argument.
 89
The second part of "p\ncZaptochar:" is ‘cZaptochar: ’. In this part, the lower case ‘c’
indicates that interactive expects a prompt and that the argument will be a character.
The prompt follows the ‘c’ and is the string ‘Zaptochar: ’ (with a space after the colon
to make it look good).
What all this does is prepare the arguments to zap-to-char so they are of the right
type, and give the user a prompt.
In a read-only buffer, the zap-to-char function copies the text to the kill ring, but
does not remove it. The echo area displays a message saying that the buffer is read-
only. Also, the terminal may beep or blink at you.

8.1.2 The Body of zap-to-char

The body of the zap-to-char function contains the code that kills (that is, removes)
the text in the region from the current position of the cursor up to and including the
specified character.
The first part of the code looks like this:
(if (char-table-p translation-table-for-input)
(setq char (or (aref translation-table-for-input char) char))) (kill-region (point) (progn
(search-forward (char-to-string char) nil nil arg) (point)))
char-table-p is a hitherto unseen function. It determines whether its argument is a
character table. When it is, it sets the character passed to zap-to-char to one of them,
if that character exists, or to the character itself. (This becomes important for certain
characters in non-European languages. The aref function extracts an element from
an array. It is an array-specific function that is not described in this document. See
Section “Arrays” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.) (point) is the current
position of the cursor.
The next part of the code is an expression using progn. The body of the progn
consists of calls to search-forward and point.
It is easier to understand how progn works after
learning about search-forward, so we will look at search-forward and then at
progn.

8.1.3 The search-forward Function

The search-forward function is used to locate the zapped-for-character in zap-tochar.
If the search is successful, search-forward leaves point immediately after the last
character in the target string. (In zap-to-char, the target string is just one character
long. zap-to-char uses the function char-to-string to ensure that the computer treats
that character as a string.) If the search is backwards, search-forward leaves point
just before the first character in the target. Also, search-forward returns t for true.
(Moving point is therefore a side effect.) In zap-to-char, the search-forward function
looks like this:
(search-forward (char-to-string char) nil nil arg) The search-
forward function takes four arguments:
90 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
1. The first argument is the target, what is searched for. This must be a string,such
as ‘"z"’.
As it happens, the argument passed to zap-to-char is a single character. Because
of the way computers are built, the Lisp interpreter may treat a single character
as being different from a string of characters. Inside the computer, a single
character has a different electronic format than a string of one character. (A
single character can often be recorded in the computer using exactly one byte;
but a string may be longer, and the computer needs to be ready for this.) Since
the search-forward function searches for a string, the character that the zap-to-
char function receives as its argument must be converted inside the computer
from one format to the other; otherwise the search-forward function will fail.
The char-to-string function is used to make this conversion.
2. The second argument bounds the search; it is specified as a position in
thebuffer. In this case, the search can go to the end of the buffer, so no bound is
set and the second argument is nil.
3. The third argument tells the function what it should do if the search fails—
itcan signal an error (and print a message) or it can return nil. A nil as the third
argument causes the function to signal an error when the search fails.
4. The fourth argument to search-forward is the repeat count—how many
occurrences of the string to look for. This argument is optional and if the
function is called without a repeat count, this argument is passed the value 1. If
this argument is negative, the search goes backwards.
In template form, a search-forward expression looks like this:
(search-forward "target-string" limit-of-search what-
to-do-if-search-fails repeat-count) We will look at
progn next.

8.1.4 The progn Special Form

progn is a special form that causes each of its arguments to be evaluated in sequence
and then returns the value of the last one. The preceding expressions are evaluated
only for the side effects they perform. The values produced by them are discarded.
Section 8.2: kill-region

The template for a progn expression is very simple:

(progn body...)
In zap-to-char, the progn expression has to do two things: put point in exactly the
right position; and return the location of point so that kill-region will know how far to
kill to.
The first argument to the progn is search-forward. When search-forward finds the
string, the function leaves point immediately after the last character in the target
string. (In this case the target string is just one character long.) If the search is
 91
backwards, search-forward leaves point just before the first character in the target.
The movement of point is a side effect.
The second and last argument to progn is the expression (point). This expression
returns the value of point, which in this case will be the location to which it has been
moved by search-forward. (In the source, a line that tells the function to go to the
previous character, if it is going forward, was commented out in 1999; I don’t
remember whether that feature or mis-feature was ever a part of the distributed
source.) The value of point is returned by the progn expression and is passed to kill-
region as kill-region’s second argument.

8.1.5 Summing up zap-to-char

Now that we have seen how search-forward and progn work, we can see how the zap-
to-char function works as a whole.
The first argument to kill-region is the position of the cursor when the zap-to-char
command is given—the value of point at that time. Within the progn, the search
function then moves point to just after the zapped-to-character and point returns the
value of this location. The kill-region function puts together these two values of point,
the first one as the beginning of the region and the second one as the end of the
region, and removes the region.
The progn special form is necessary because the kill-region command takes two
arguments; and it would fail if search-forward and point expressions were written in
sequence as two additional arguments. The progn expression is a single argument to
kill-region and returns the one value that kill-region needs for its second argument.

8.2 kill-region
The zap-to-char function uses the kill-region function. This function clips text from a
region and copies that text to the kill ring, from which it may be retrieved.
The Emacs 22 version of that function uses condition-case and copy-regionas-kill,
both of which we will explain. condition-case is an important special form.
In essence, the kill-region function calls condition-case, which takes three
arguments. In this function, the first argument does nothing. The second argument
contains the code that does the work when all goes well. The third argument
contains the code that is called in the event of an error.
We will go through the condition-case code in a moment. First, let us look at the
definition of kill-region, with comments added:

(defun kill-region (beg end)

92 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
"Kill (\"cut\") text between point and mark.
This deletes the text from the buffer and saves it in the kill ring. The command \\[yank] can
retrieve it from there. ... "

;; • Since order matters, pass point first. (interactive (list (point)

(mark)))
;; • And tell us if we cannot cut the text. ;; 'unless' is an 'if'
without a then-part.
(unless (and beg end)
(error "The mark is not set now, so there is no region"))

;; • 'condition-case' takes three arguments.

;; If the first argument is nil, as it is here, ;;
information about the error signal is not ;; stored for use
by another function.
(condition-case nil

;; • The second argument to 'condition-case' tells the ;; Lisp

interpreter what to do when all goes well.

;; It starts with a 'let' function that extracts the string

;; and tests whether it exists. If so (that is what the
;; 'when' checks), it calls an 'if' function that determines
;; whether the previous command was another call to
;; 'kill-region'; if it was, then the new text is appended to ;; the previous text;
if not, then a different function, ;; 'kill-new', is called.

;; The 'kill-append' function concatenates the new string and ;; the old.
The 'kill-new' function inserts text into a new ;; item in the kill ring.

;; 'when' is an 'if' without an else-part. The second 'when'

;; again checks whether the current string exists; in
;; addition, it checks whether the previous command was
;; another call to 'kill-region'. If one or the other
;; condition is true, then it sets the current command to ;; be 'kill-region'.
(let ((string (filter-buffer-substring beg end t)))
(when string ;STRING is nil if BEG = END
;; Add that string to the kill ring, one way or another.
(if (eq last-command 'kill-region)
Section 8.2: kill-region

;; − 'yank-handler' is an optional argument to

;; 'kill-region' that tells the 'kill-append' and
;; 'kill-new' functions how deal with properties ;; added to the
text, such as 'bold' or 'italics'.
(kill-append string (< end beg) yank-handler)
 93
(kill-new string nil yank-handler)))
(when (or string (eq last-command 'kill-region))
(setq this-command 'kill-region)) nil)

;; • The third argument to 'condition-case' tells the interpreter ;; what to do with an

error.
;; The third argument has a conditions part and a body part.
;; If the conditions are met (in this case, ;; if
text or buffer are read-only) ;; then the body is
executed.
;; The first part of the third argument is the following:
((buffer-read-only text-read-only) ;; the if-part
;; ... the then-part
(copy-region-as-kill beg end)
;; Next, also as part of the then-part, set this-command, so
;; it will be set in an error
(setq this-command 'kill-region)
;; Finally, in the then-part, send a message if you may copy
;; the text to the kill ring without signaling an error, but ;; don't if you may
not.
(if kill-read-only-ok
(progn (message "Read only text copied to kill ring") nil)
(barf-if-buffer-read-only)
;; If the buffer isn't read-only, the text is.
(signal 'text-read-only (list (current-buffer)))))))

8.2.1 condition-case
As we have seen earlier (see Section 1.3 “Generate an Error Message”, page 4), when
the Emacs Lisp interpreter has trouble evaluating an expression, it provides you
with help; in the jargon, this is called “signaling an error”. Usually, the computer
stops the program and shows you a message.
However, some programs undertake complicated actions. They should not simply
stop on an error. In the kill-region function, the most likely error is that you will try to
kill text that is read-only and cannot be removed. So the kill-region function contains
code to handle this circumstance. This code, which makes up the body of the kill-
region function, is inside of a condition-case special form.
The template for condition-case looks like this:
(condition-case var
bodyform error-
handler...)
The second argument, bodyform, is straightforward. The condition-case special
form causes the Lisp interpreter to evaluate the code in bodyform. If no error occurs,
the special form returns the code’s value and produces the side-effects, if any.
94 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
In short, the bodyform part of a condition-case expression determines what should
happen when everything works correctly.
However, if an error occurs, among its other actions, the function generating the
error signal will define one or more error condition names.
An error handler is the third argument to condition-case. An error handler has
two parts, a condition-name and a body. If the condition-name part of an error handler
matches a condition name generated by an error, then the body part of the error
handler is run.
As you will expect, the condition-name part of an error handler may be either a
single condition name or a list of condition names.
Also, a complete condition-case expression may contain more than one error
handler. When an error occurs, the first applicable handler is run.
Lastly, the first argument to the condition-case expression, the var argument, is
sometimes bound to a variable that contains information about the error. However, if
that argument is nil, as is the case in kill-region, that information is discarded.
Section 8.3: copy-region-as-kill 95

In brief, in the kill-region function, the code condition-case works like this:
If no errors, run only this code but, if errors, run
this other code.

8.2.2 Lisp macro

The part of the condition-case expression that is evaluated in the expectation that all
goes well has a when. The code uses when to determine whether the string variable
points to text that exists.
A when expression is simply a programmers’ convenience. It is like an if without
the possibility of an else clause. In your mind, you can replace when with if and
understand what goes on. That is what the Lisp interpreter does.
Technically speaking, when is a Lisp macro. A Lisp macro enables you to define
new control constructs and other language features. It tells the interpreter how to
compute another Lisp expression which will in turn compute the value. In this case,
the other expression is an if expression.
The kill-region function definition also has an unless macro; it is the opposite of
when. The unless macro is like an if except that it has no then-clause, and it supplies
an implicit nil for that.
For more about Lisp macros, see Section “Macros” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual. The C programming language also provides macros. These are
different, but also useful.
Regarding the when macro, in the condition-case expression, when the string has
content, then another conditional expression is executed. This is an if with both a
then-part and an else-part.
(if (eq last-command 'kill-region)
(kill-append string (< end beg) yank-handler)
(kill-new string nil yank-handler))
The then-part is evaluated if the previous command was another call to kill-region; if
not, the else-part is evaluated.
yank-handler is an optional argument to kill-region that tells the kill-append and
kill-new functions how deal with properties added to the text, such as bold or italics.
last-command is a variable that comes with Emacs that we have not seen before.
Normally, whenever a function is executed, Emacs sets the value of last-command to
the previous command.
In this segment of the definition, the if expression checks whether the previous
command was kill-region. If it was,
(kill-append string (< end beg) yank-handler) concatenates a copy of the newly clipped
text to the just previously clipped text in the kill ring.
96 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text

8.3 copy-region-as-kill
The copy-region-as-kill function copies a region of text from a buffer and (via either kill-
append or kill-new) saves it in the kill-ring.
If you call copy-region-as-kill immediately after a kill-region command, Emacs
appends the newly copied text to the previously copied text. This means that if you
yank back the text, you get it all, from both this and the previous operation. On the
other hand, if some other command precedes the copy-region-as-kill, the function
copies the text into a separate entry in the kill ring.
Here is the complete text of the version 22 copy-region-as-kill function:
(defun copy-region-as-kill (beg end)
"Save the region as if killed, but don't kill it.
In Transient Mark mode, deactivate the mark.
If `interprogram-cut-function' is non-nil, also save the text for a window system cut and paste."
(interactive "r")
(if (eq last-command 'kill-region)
(kill-append (filter-buffer-substring beg end) (< end beg))
(kill-new (filter-buffer-substring beg end))) (if transient-mark-
mode
(setq deactivate-mark t)) nil)
As usual, this function can be divided into its component parts:
(defun copy-region-as-kill (argument-list)
"documentation..." (interactive
"r") body...)
The arguments are beg and end and the function is interactive with "r", so the two
arguments must refer to the beginning and end of the region. If you have been reading
through this document from the beginning, understanding these parts of a function is
almost becoming routine.
The documentation is somewhat confusing unless you remember that the word
“kill” has a meaning different from usual. The Transient Mark and interprogram-cut-
function comments explain certain side-effects.
After you once set a mark, a buffer always contains a region. If you wish, you can
use Transient Mark mode to highlight the region temporarily. (No one wants to
highlight the region all the time, so Transient Mark mode highlights it only at
appropriate times. Many people turn off Transient Mark mode, so the region is never
highlighted.)
Also, a windowing system allows you to copy, cut, and paste among different
programs. In the X windowing system, for example, the interprogram-cut-function
function is x-select-text, which works with the windowing system’s equivalent of the
Emacs kill ring.
The body of the copy-region-as-kill function starts with an if clause. What this
clause does is distinguish between two different situations: whether or not this
command is executed immediately after a previous kill-region command. In the first
Section 8.3: copy-region-as-kill 97

case, the new region is appended to the previously copied text. Otherwise, it is
inserted into the beginning of the kill ring as a separate piece of text from the
previous piece.
The last two lines of the function prevent the region from lighting up if Transient
Mark mode is turned on.
The body of copy-region-as-kill merits discussion in detail.

8.3.1 The Body of copy-region-as-kill

The copy-region-as-kill function works in much the same way as the kill-region
function. Both are written so that two or more kills in a row combine their text into a
single entry. If you yank back the text from the kill ring, you get it all in one piece.
Moreover, kills that kill forward from the current position of the cursor are added to
the end of the previously copied text and commands that copy text backwards add it
to the beginning of the previously copied text. This way, the words in the text stay in
the proper order.
Like kill-region, the copy-region-as-kill function makes use of the last-command
variable that keeps track of the previous Emacs command.
Normally, whenever a function is executed, Emacs sets the value of this-command
to the function being executed (which in this case would be copy-region-as-kill). At
the same time, Emacs sets the value of last-command to the previous value of this-
command.
In the first part of the body of the copy-region-as-kill function, an if expression
determines whether the value of last-command is kill-region. If so, the then-part of the
if expression is evaluated; it uses the kill-append function to concatenate the text
copied at this call to the function with the text already in the first element (the car) of
the kill ring. On the other hand, if the value of last-command is not kill-region, then the
copy-region-as-kill function attaches a new element to the kill ring using the kill-new
function.
The if expression reads as follows; it uses eq:
(if (eq last-command 'kill-region)
;; then-part
(kill-append (filter-buffer-substring beg end) (< end beg)) ;; else-part
(kill-new (filter-buffer-substring beg end)))
(The filter-buffer-substring function returns a filtered substring of the buffer, if any.
Optionally—the arguments are not here, so neither is done—the function may delete
the initial text or return the text without its properties; this function is a
replacement for the older buffer-substring function, which came before text
properties were implemented.)
The eq function tests whether its first argument is the same Lisp object as its second
argument. The eq function is similar to the equal function in that it is used to test for
equality, but differs in that it determines whether two representations are actually
98 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text

the same object inside the computer, but with different names. equal determines
whether the structure and contents of two expressions are the same.
If the previous command was kill-region, then the Emacs Lisp interpreter calls the

kill-append function The kill-append function

The kill-append function looks like this:

(defun kill-append (string before-p &optional yank-handler)
"Append STRING to the end of the latest kill in the kill ring.
If BEFORE-P is non-nil, prepend STRING to the kill.
... "
(let* ((cur (car kill-ring)))
(kill-new (if before-p (concat string cur) (concat cur string)) (or (= (length cur) 0)
(equal yank-handler
(get-text-property 0 'yank-handler cur)))
yank-handler)))
The kill-append function is fairly straightforward. It uses the kill-new function, which we
will discuss in more detail in a moment.
(Also, the function provides an optional argument called yank-handler; when
invoked, this argument tells the function how to deal with properties added to the
text, such as bold or italics.)
It has a let* function to set the value of the first element of the kill ring to cur. (I
do not know why the function does not use let instead; only one value is set in the
expression. Perhaps this is a bug that produces no problems?)
Consider the conditional that is one of the two arguments to kill-new. It uses
concat to concatenate the new text to the car of the kill ring. Whether it prepends or
appends the text depends on the results of an if expression:
(if before-p ; if-part
(concat string cur) ; then-part
(concat cur string)) ; else-part
If the region being killed is before the region that was killed in the last command,
then it should be prepended before the material that was saved in the previous kill;
and conversely, if the killed text follows what was just killed, it should be appended
after the previous text. The if expression depends on the predicate before-p to decide
whether the newly saved text should be put before or after the previously saved text.
The symbol before-p is the name of one of the arguments to kill-append. When the
kill-append function is evaluated, it is bound to the value returned by evaluating the
actual argument. In this case, this is the expression (<endbeg). This expression does
not directly determine whether the killed text in this command is located before or
after the kill text of the last command; what it does is determine whether the value
of the variable end is less than the value of the variable beg. If it is, it means that the
user is most likely heading towards the beginning of the buffer. Also, the result of
evaluating the predicate expression, (<endbeg), will be true and the text will be
Section 8.3: copy-region-as-kill 99

prepended before the previous text. On the other hand, if the value of the variable
end is greater than the value of the variable beg, the text will be appended after the
previous text.
When the newly saved text will be prepended, then the string with the new text will
be concatenated before the old text:
(concat string cur)
But if the text will be appended, it will be concatenated after the old text:
(concat cur string))
To understand how this works, we first need to review the concat function. The
concat function links together or unites two strings of text. The result is a string. For
example:
(concat "abc" "def")
⇒ "abcdef"

(concat "new "

(car '("first element" "second element")))
⇒ "new first element"

(concat (car
'("first element" "second element")) " modified")
⇒ "first element modified"
We can now make sense of kill-append: it modifies the contents of the kill ring.
The kill ring is a list, each element of which is saved text. The kill-append function
uses the kill-new function which in turn uses the setcar function.

The kill-new function

100 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text

In version 22 the kill-new function looks like this:

(defun kill-new (string &optional replace yank-handler) "Make STRING
the latest kill in the kill ring. Set `kill-ring-yank-pointer' to point to it.

If `interprogram-cut-function' is non-nil, apply it to STRING. Optional second argument

REPLACE non-nil means that STRING will replace the front of the kill ring, rather than being
added to the list.
..."
(if (> (length string) 0) (if yank-
handler
(put-text-property 0 (length string)
'yank-handler yank-handler string)) (if yank-
handler
(signal 'args-out-of-range
(list string "yank-handler specified for empty string"))))
(if (fboundp 'menu-bar-update-yank-menu)
(menu-bar-update-yank-menu string (and replace (car kill-ring)))) (if (and replace kill-
ring)
(setcar kill-ring string)
(push string kill-ring)
(if (> (length kill-ring) kill-ring-max)
(setcdr (nthcdr (1- kill-ring-max) kill-ring) nil)))
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer kill-ring) (if interprogram-
cut-function
(funcall interprogram-cut-function string (not replace))))
(Notice that the function is not interactive.)
As usual, we can look at this function in parts.
The function definition has an optional yank-handler argument, which when
invoked tells the function how to deal with properties added to the text, such as bold
or italics. We will skip that.
The first line of the documentation makes sense:
Make STRING the latest kill in the kill ring.
Let’s skip over the rest of the documentation for the moment.
Also, let’s skip over the initial if expression and those lines of code involving menu-bar-
update-yank-menu. We will explain them below.
The critical lines are these:
(if (and replace kill-ring)
;; then
(setcar kill-ring string)
;; else
(push string kill-ring)
(if (> (length kill-ring) kill-ring-max)
;; avoid overly long kill ring
Section 8.3: copy-region-as-kill 101

(setcdr (nthcdr (1- kill-ring-max) kill-ring) nil)))

(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer kill-ring) (if interprogram-
cut-function
(funcall interprogram-cut-function string (not replace))))
The conditional test is (andreplacekill-ring). This will be true when two conditions
are met: the kill ring has something in it, and the replace variable is true.
When the kill-append function sets replace to be true and when the kill ring has at
least one item in it, the setcar expression is executed:
(setcar kill-ring string)
The setcar function actually changes the first element of the kill-ring list to the value
of string. It replaces the first element.
On the other hand, if the kill ring is empty, or replace is false, the else-part of the
condition is executed:
(push string kill-ring) push puts its first argument onto the second. It is
similar to the older
(setq kill-ring (cons string kill-ring)) or the newer
(add-to-list kill-ring string)
When it is false, the expression first constructs a new version of the kill ring by
prepending string to the existing kill ring as a new element (that is what the push
does). Then it executes a second if clause. This second if clause keeps the kill ring
from growing too long.
Let’s look at these two expressions in order.
The push line of the else-part sets the new value of the kill ring to what results from
adding the string being killed to the old kill ring.
We can see how this works with an example.
First,
(setq example-list '("here is a clause" "another clause"))
After evaluating this expression with C-xC-e, you can evaluate example-list and see what
it returns:
example-list
⇒ ("here is a clause" "another clause")
Now, we can add a new element on to this list by evaluating the following expression:

(push "a third clause" example-list)

When we evaluate example-list, we find its value is:
example-list
⇒ ("a third clause" "here is a clause" "another clause") Thus, the third
clause is added to the list by push.
Now for the second part of the if clause. This expression keeps the kill ring from
growing too long. It looks like this:
(if (> (length kill-ring) kill-ring-max)
102 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text

(setcdr (nthcdr (1- kill-ring-max) kill-ring) nil))

The code checks whether the length of the kill ring is greater than the maximum
permitted length. This is the value of kill-ring-max (which is 120, by default). If the
length of the kill ring is too long, then this code sets the last element of the kill ring
to nil. It does this by using two functions, nthcdr and setcdr.
We looked at setcdr earlier (see Section 7.6 “setcdr”, page 83). It sets the cdr of a
list, just as setcar sets the car of a list. In this case, however, setcdr will not be setting
the cdr of the whole kill ring; the nthcdr function is used to cause it to set the cdr of
the next to last element of the kill ring—this means that since the cdr of the next to
last element is the last element of the kill ring, it will set the last element of the kill
ring.
The nthcdr function works by repeatedly taking the cdr of a list—it takes the cdr
of the cdr of the cdr . . . It does this N times and returns the results. (See Section 7.3
“nthcdr”, page 80.)
Thus, if we had a four element list that was supposed to be three elements long,
we could set the cdr of the next to last element to nil, and thereby shorten the list. (If
you set the last element to some other value than nil, which you could do, then you
would not have shortened the list. See Section 7.6 “setcdr”, page 83.)
You can see shortening by evaluating the following three expressions in turn.
First set the value of trees to (mapleoakpinebirch), then set the cdr of its second cdr to
nil and then find the value of trees:
(setq trees (list 'maple 'oak 'pine 'birch))
⇒ (maple oak pine birch)

(setcdr (nthcdr 2 trees) nil) ⇒ nil

trees
⇒ (maple oak pine)
(The value returned by the setcdr expression is nil since that is what the cdr is set to.)
To repeat, in kill-new, the nthcdr function takes the cdr a number of times that is one
less than the maximum permitted size of the kill ring and setcdr sets the cdr of that
element (which will be the rest of the elements in the kill ring) to nil. This prevents the
kill ring from growing too long.
The next to last expression in the kill-new function is
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer kill-ring)
The kill-ring-yank-pointer is a global variable that is set to be the kill-ring.
Even though the kill-ring-yank-pointer is called a ‘pointer’, it is a variable just like
the kill ring. However, the name has been chosen to help humans understand how
the variable is used.
Now, to return to an early expression in the body of the function:
(if (fboundp 'menu-bar-update-yank-menu)
Section 8.3: copy-region-as-kill 103

(menu-bar-update-yank-menu string (and replace (car kill-ring)))) It starts with an if

expression
In this case, the expression tests first to see whether menu-bar-update-yankmenu
exists as a function, and if so, calls it. The fboundp function returns true if the symbol
it is testing has a function definition that is not void. If the symbol’s function
definition were void, we would receive an error message, as we did when we created
errors intentionally (see Section 1.3 “Generate an Error Message”, page 4). The then-
part contains an expression whose first element is the function and.
The and special form evaluates each of its arguments until one of the arguments
returns a value of nil, in which case the and expression returns nil; however, if none
of the arguments returns a value of nil, the value resulting from evaluating the last
argument is returned. (Since such a value is not nil, it is considered true in Emacs
Lisp.) In other words, an and expression returns a true value only if all its arguments
are true. (See Section 5.4 “Second Buffer Related Review”, page 71.)
The expression determines whether the second argument to menu-bar-updateyank-
menu is true or not.
menu-bar-update-yank-menu is one of the functions that make it possible to use
the “Select and Paste” menu in the Edit item of a menu bar; using a mouse, you can
look at the various pieces of text you have saved and select one piece to paste.
The last expression in the kill-new function adds the newly copied string to
whatever facility exists for copying and pasting among different programs running in
a windowing system. In the X Windowing system, for example, the x-selecttext
function takes the string and stores it in memory operated by X. You can paste the
string in another program, such as an Xterm.
The expression looks like this:
(if interprogram-cut-function
(funcall interprogram-cut-function string (not replace))))
If an interprogram-cut-function exists, then Emacs executes funcall, which in turn
calls its first argument as a function and passes the remaining arguments to it.
(Incidentally, as far as I can see, this if expression could be replaced by an and
expression similar to the one in the first part of the function.)
We are not going to discuss windowing systems and other programs further, but
merely note that this is a mechanism that enables GNU Emacs to work easily and
well with other programs.
This code for placing text in the kill ring, either concatenated with an existing
element or as a new element, leads us to the code for bringing back text that has
been cut out of the buffer—the yank commands. However, before discussing the
yank commands, it is better to learn how lists are implemented in a computer. This
will make clear such mysteries as the use of the term “pointer”. But before that, we
will digress into C.
104 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text

8.4 Digression into C

The copy-region-as-kill function (see Section 8.3 “copy-region-as-kill”, page 93) uses
the filter-buffer-substring function, which in turn uses the delete-and-extract-region
function. It removes the contents of a region and you cannot get them back.
Unlike the other code discussed here, the delete-and-extract-region function is not
written in Emacs Lisp; it is written in C and is one of the primitives of the GNU Emacs
system. Since it is very simple, I will digress briefly from Lisp and describe it here.
Like many of the other Emacs primitives, delete-and-extract-region is written as
an instance of a C macro, a macro being a template for code. The complete macro
looks like this:
DEFUN ("delete-and-extract-region", Fdelete_and_extract_region,
Sdelete_and_extract_region, 2, 2, 0, doc: /* Delete the text between START and
END and return it. */)
(Lisp_Object start, Lisp_Object end)
{ validate_region (&start, &end); if (XFIXNUM
(start) == XFIXNUM (end))
return empty_unibyte_string;
return del_range_1 (XFIXNUM (start), XFIXNUM (end), 1, 1); }
Without going into the details of the macro writing process, let me point out that
this macro starts with the word DEFUN. The word DEFUN was chosen since the code
serves the same purpose as defun does in Lisp. (The DEFUN C macro is defined in
emacs/src/lisp.h.)
The word DEFUN is followed by seven parts inside of parentheses:
• The first part is the name given to the function in Lisp, delete-and-extractregion.
 105
Section 8.4: Digression into C

• The second part is the name of the function in C, Fdelete_and_extract_ region.

By convention, it starts with ‘F’. Since C does not use hyphens in names,
underscores are used instead.
• The third part is the name for the C constant structure that records information
on this function for internal use. It is the name of the function in C but begins
with an ‘S’ instead of an ‘F’.
• The fourth and fifth parts specify the minimum and maximum number of
arguments the function can have. This function demands exactly 2 arguments.
• The sixth part is nearly like the argument that follows the interactive
declaration in a function written in Lisp: a letter followed, perhaps, by a
prompt. The only difference from Lisp is when the macro is called with no
arguments. Then you write a 0 (which is a null string), as in this macro.
If you were to specify arguments, you would place them between quotation
marks. The C macro for goto-char includes "NGotochar:" in this position to
indicate that the function expects a raw prefix, in this case, a numerical location
in a buffer, and provides a prompt.
• The seventh part is a documentation string, just like the one for a function
written in Emacs Lisp. This is written as a C comment. (When you build Emacs,
the program lib-src/make-docfile extracts these comments and uses them to
make the documentation.)
In a C macro, the formal parameters come next, with a statement of what kind of
object they are, followed by the body of the macro. For delete-and-extractregion the
body consists of the following four lines: validate_region (&start, &end); if (XFIXNUM (start)
== XFIXNUM (end))
return empty_unibyte_string;
return del_range_1 (XFIXNUM (start), XFIXNUM (end), 1, 1);
The validate_region function checks whether the values passed as the beginning
and end of the region are the proper type and are within range. If the beginning and
end positions are the same, then return an empty string.
The del_range_1 function actually deletes the text. It is a complex function we will
not look into. It updates the buffer and does other things. However, it is worth
looking at the two arguments passed to del_range_1. These are XFIXNUM(start) and
XFIXNUM(end).
As far as the C language is concerned, start and end are two opaque values that
mark the beginning and end of the region to be deleted. More precisely, and
requiring more expert knowledge to understand, the two values are of type Lisp_
Object, which might be a C pointer, a C integer, or a C struct; C code ordinarily should
not care how Lisp_Object is implemented.
106 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
Lisp_Object widths depend on the machine, and are typically 32 or 64 bits. A few
of the bits are used to specify the type of information; the remaining bits are used as
content.
‘XFIXNUM’ is a C macro that extracts the relevant integer from the longer
collection of bits; the type bits are discarded.
The command in delete-and-extract-region looks like this: del_range_1
(XFIXNUM (start), XFIXNUM (end), 1, 1);
It deletes the region between the beginning position, start, and the ending position,
end.
From the point of view of the person writing Lisp, Emacs is all very simple; but
hidden underneath is a great deal of complexity to make it all work.

8.5 Initializing a Variable with defvar

The copy-region-as-kill function is written in Emacs Lisp. Two functions within it, kill-
append and kill-new, copy a region in a buffer and save it in a variable called the kill-
ring. This section describes how the kill-ring variable is created and initialized using
the defvar special form.
(Again we note that the term kill-ring is a misnomer. The text that is clipped out of
the buffer can be brought back; it is not a ring of corpses, but a ring of resurrectable
text.)
In Emacs Lisp, a variable such as the kill-ring is created and given an initial value
by using the defvar special form. The name comes from “define variable”.
The defvar special form is similar to setq in that it sets the value of a variable. It is
unlike setq in three ways: first, it marks the variable as “special” so that it is always
dynamically bound, even when lexical-binding is t (see Section 3.6.4 “How let Binds
Variables”, page 36). Second, it only sets the value of the variable if the variable does
not already have a value. If the variable already has a value, defvar does not override
the existing value. Third, defvar has a documentation string.
(There is a related macro, defcustom, designed for variables that people
customize. It has more features than defvar. (See Section 16.2 “Setting Variables with
defcustom”, page 197.)
You can see the current value of a variable, any variable, by using the describe-
variable function, which is usually invoked by typing C-hv. If you type C-hv and then
kill-ring (followed by RET) when prompted, you will see what is in your current kill
ring—this may be quite a lot! Conversely, if you have been doing nothing this Emacs
session except read this document, you may have nothing in it. Also, you will see the
documentation for kill-ring:
Documentation:
List of killed text sequences.
Since the kill ring is supposed to interact nicely with cut-and-paste facilities offered by
window systems, use of this variable should interact nicely with `interprogram-cut-function'
and
 107
`interprogram-paste-function'. The functions `kill-new', `kill-append', and `current-kill' are
supposed to implement this interaction; you may want to use them instead of manipulating
the kill ring directly.
Section 8.6: Review

The kill ring is defined by a defvar in the following way:

(defvar kill-ring nil
"List of killed text sequences.
...")
In this variable definition, the variable is given an initial value of nil, which makes
sense, since if you have saved nothing, you want nothing back if you give a yank
command. The documentation string is written just like the documentation string of
a defun. As with the documentation string of the defun, the first line of the
documentation should be a complete sentence, since some commands, like apropos,
print only the first line of documentation. Succeeding lines should not be indented;
otherwise they look odd when you use C-hv (describe-variable).

8.5.1 defvar and an asterisk

In the past, Emacs used the defvar special form both for internal variables that you
would not expect a user to change and for variables that you do expect a user to
change. Although you can still use defvar for user customizable variables, please use
defcustom instead, since it provides a path into the Customization commands. (See
Section 16.2 “Specifying Variables using defcustom”, page 197.)
When you specified a variable using the defvar special form, you could
distinguish a variable that a user might want to change from others by typing an
asterisk, ‘*’, in the first column of its documentation string. For example:
(defvar shell-command-default-error-buffer nil "*Buffer name for
`shell-command' ... error output.
... ")
You could (and still can) use the set-variable command to change the value of shell-
command-default-error-buffer temporarily. However, options set using set-variable are
set only for the duration of your editing session. The new values are not saved
between sessions. Each time Emacs starts, it reads the original value, unless you
change the value within your .emacs file, either by setting it manually or by using
customize. See Chapter 16 “Your .emacs File”, page 196.
For me, the major use of the set-variable command is to suggest variables that I
might want to set in my .emacs file. There are now more than 700 such variables, far
too many to remember readily. Fortunately, you can press TAB after calling the M-
xset-variable command to see the list of variables. (See Section “Examining and
Setting Variables” in The GNU Emacs Manual.)
108 Chapter 8: Cutting and Storing Text
8.6 Review
Here is a brief summary of some recently introduced functions.
car
cdr car returns the first element of a list; cdr returns the second and subsequent
elements of a list.
For example:
(car '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7))
⇒1
(cdr '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7)) ⇒ (2 3 4 5
6 7)
cons cons constructs a list by prepending its first argument to its second
argument.
For example:
(cons 1 '(2 3 4)) ⇒ (1 2 3
4)
funcall funcall evaluates its first argument as a function. It passes its remaining
arguments to its first argument.
nthcdr Return the result of taking cdr n times on a list. The nth cdr. The “rest of
the rest”, as it were.
For example:
(nthcdr 3 '(1 2 3 4 5 6 7)) ⇒ (4 5 6 7)

setcar
setcdr setcar changes the first element of a list; setcdr changes the second and
subsequent elements of a list.
For example:
(setq triple (list 1 2 3)) (setcar triple '37)

triple
⇒ (37 2 3)

(setcdr triple '("foo" "bar"))

triple
⇒ (37 "foo" "bar")

progn Evaluate each argument in sequence and then return the value of the
last.
For example:
(progn 1 2 3 4)
⇒4

save-restriction
 109
Record whatever narrowing is in effect in the current buffer, if any, and
restore that narrowing after evaluating the arguments.
search-forward
Search for a string, and if the string is found, move point. With a
regular expression, use the similar re-search-forward. (See Chapter 12
Section 8.7: Searching Exercises

“Regular Expression Searches”, page 141, for an explanation of regular

expression patterns and searches.) search-forward and re-search-
forward take four arguments:
1. The string or regular expression to search for.
2. Optionally, the limit of the search.
3. Optionally, what to do if the search fails, return nil or an error
message.
4. Optionally, how many times to repeat the search; if negative,
thesearch goes backwards.
kill-region delete-and-extract-region copy-region-as-kill kill-region cuts the text between
point and mark from the buffer and stores that text in the kill ring, so you can get it
back by yanking.
copy-region-as-kill copies the text between point and mark into the kill
ring, from which you can get it by yanking. The function does not cut or
remove the text from the buffer.
delete-and-extract-region removes the text between point and mark from the
buffer and throws it away. You cannot get it back. (This is not an interactive
command.)

8.7 Searching Exercises

• Write an interactive function that searches for a string. If the search finds the
string, leave point after it and display a message that says “Found!”. (Do not use
search-forward for the name of this function; if you do, you will overwrite the
existing version of search-forward that comes with Emacs. Use a name such as
test-search instead.)
• Write a function that prints the third element of the kill ring in the echo area, if
any; if the kill ring does not contain a third element, print an appropriate
message.
110 Chapter 9: How Lists are Implemented
9 How Lists are Implemented
In Lisp, atoms are recorded in a straightforward fashion; if the implementation is not
straightforward in practice, it is, nonetheless, straightforward in theory. The atom
‘rose’, for example, is recorded as the four contiguous letters ‘r’, ‘o’, ‘s’, ‘e’. A list, on the
other hand, is kept differently. The mechanism is equally simple, but it takes a
moment to get used to the idea. A list is kept using a series of pairs of pointers. In the
series, the first pointer in each pair points to an atom or to another list, and the
second pointer in each pair points to the next pair, or to the symbol nil, which marks
the end of the list.
A pointer itself is quite simply the electronic address of what is pointed to. Hence,
a list is kept as a series of electronic addresses.
For example, the list (rosevioletbuttercup) has three elements, ‘rose’, ‘violet’, and
‘buttercup’. In the computer, the electronic address of ‘rose’ is recorded in a segment
of computer memory called a cons cell (because it’s what the function cons actually
creates). That cons cell also holds the address of a second cons cell, whose car is the
atom ‘violet’; and that address (the one that tells where to find ‘violet’) is kept along
with the address of a third cons cell which holds the address for the atom ‘buttercup’.
This sounds more complicated than it is and is easier seen in a diagram:

nil

rose violet

buttercup

In the diagram, each box represents a word of computer memory that holds a Lisp
object, usually in the form of a memory address. The boxes, i.e., the addresses, are in
pairs. Each arrow points to what the address is the address of, either an atom or
another pair of addresses. The first box is the electronic address of ‘rose’ and the
arrow points to ‘rose’; the second box is the address of the next pair of boxes, the
first part of which is the address of ‘violet’ and the second part of which is the
address of the next pair. The very last box points to the symbol nil, which marks the
end of the list.
When a variable is set to a list with an operation such as setq, it stores the
address of the first box in the variable. Thus, evaluation of the expression
(setq bouquet '(rose violet buttercup))
creates a situation like this:
 111
bouquet

nil

rose violet buttercup

In this example, the symbol bouquet holds the address of the first pair of boxes.
This same list can be illustrated in a different sort of box notation like this:

bouquet

car cdr car cdr car cdr

rose violet butter- nil
cup

(Symbols consist of more than pairs of addresses, but the structure of a symbol is
made up of addresses. Indeed, the symbol bouquet consists of a group of
addressboxes, one of which is the address of the printed word ‘bouquet’, a second of
which is the address of a function definition attached to the symbol, if any, a third of
which is the address of the first pair of address-boxes for the list (roseviolet
buttercup), and so on. Here we are showing that the symbol’s third address-box
points to the first pair of address-boxes for the list.)
If a symbol is set to the cdr of a list, the list itself is not changed; the symbol
simply has an address further down the list. (In the jargon, car and cdr are “non-
destructive”.) Thus, evaluation of the following expression
(setq flowers (cdr bouquet))
produces this:

bouquet flowers

nil

rose violet buttercup

The value of flowers is (violetbuttercup), which is to say, the symbol flowers holds the
address of the pair of address-boxes, the first of which holds the address of violet,
and the second of which holds the address of buttercup.
A pair of address-boxes is called a cons cell or dotted pair. See Section “Cons Cell
and List Types” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, and Section “Dotted Pair
112 Chapter 9: How Lists are Implemented
Notation” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more information about cons
cells and dotted pairs.
The function cons adds a new pair of addresses to the front of a series of
addresses like that shown above. For example, evaluating the expression
(setq bouquet (cons 'lily bouquet)) produces:

bouquet flowers

nil
buttercup
lily violet
rose
Section 9.1: Symbols as a Chest of Drawers

However, this does not change the value of the symbol flowers, as you can see by
evaluating the following, (eq (cdr (cdr bouquet)) flowers) which returns t for true.
Until it is reset, flowers still has the value (violetbuttercup); that is, it has the
address of the cons cell whose first address is of violet. Also, this does not alter any
of the pre-existing cons cells; they are all still there.
Thus, in Lisp, to get the cdr of a list, you just get the address of the next cons cell
in the series; to get the car of a list, you get the address of the first element of the list;
to cons a new element on a list, you add a new cons cell to the front of the list. That is
all there is to it! The underlying structure of Lisp is brilliantly simple!
And what does the last address in a series of cons cells refer to? It is the address
of the empty list, of nil.
In summary, when a Lisp variable is set to a value, it is provided with the address
of the list to which the variable refers.

9.1 Symbols as a Chest of Drawers

In an earlier section, I suggested that you might imagine a symbol as being a chest of
drawers. The function definition is put in one drawer, the value in another, and so on.
What is put in the drawer holding the value can be changed without affecting the
contents of the drawer holding the function definition, and vice versa.
Actually, what is put in each drawer is the address of the value or function
definition. It is as if you found an old chest in the attic, and in one of its drawers you
found a map giving you directions to where the buried treasure lies.
(In addition to its name, symbol definition, and variable value, a symbol has a
drawer for a property list which can be used to record other information. Property
lists are not discussed here; see Section “Property Lists” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.)
Here is a fanciful representation:
 113
Chest of Drawers Contents of Drawers

directions to map to
symbol name bouquet

directions to
symbol definition [none]

directions to map to
variable name (rose violet buttercup)

directions to
property list [not described here]

9.2 Exercise
Set flowers to violet and buttercup. Cons two more flowers on to this list and set this
new list to more-flowers. Set the car of flowers to a fish. What does the more-flowers
list now contain?
Section 10.2: The kill-ring-yank-pointer Variable

10 Yanking Text Back

Whenever you cut text out of a buffer with a kill command in GNU Emacs, you can
bring it back with a yank command. The text that is cut out of the buffer is put in the
kill ring and the yank commands insert the appropriate contents of the kill ring back
into a buffer (not necessarily the original buffer).
A simple C-y (yank) command inserts the first item from the kill ring into the
current buffer. If the C-y command is followed immediately by M-y, the first element
is replaced by the second element. Successive M-y commands replace the second
element with the third, fourth, or fifth element, and so on. When the last element in
the kill ring is reached, it is replaced by the first element and the cycle is repeated.
(Thus the kill ring is called a “ring” rather than just a “list”. However, the actual data
structure that holds the text is a list. See Appendix B “Handling the Kill Ring”, page
225, for the details of how the list is handled as a ring.)
114 Chapter 9: How Lists are Implemented
10.1 Kill Ring Overview
The kill ring is a list of textual strings. This is what it looks like:
("some text" "a different piece of text" "yet more text")
If this were the contents of my kill ring and I pressed C-y, the string of characters
saying ‘sometext’ would be inserted in this buffer where my cursor is located.
The yank command is also used for duplicating text by copying it. The copied text
is not cut from the buffer, but a copy of it is put on the kill ring and is inserted by
yanking it back.
Three functions are used for bringing text back from the kill ring: yank, which is
usually bound to C-y; yank-pop, which is usually bound to M-y; and rotate-yankpointer,
which is used by the two other functions.
These functions refer to the kill ring through a variable called the kill-ringyank-
pointer. Indeed, the insertion code for both the yank and yank-pop functions is:
(insert (car kill-ring-yank-pointer))
(Well, no more. In GNU Emacs 22, the function has been replaced by insert-foryank
which calls insert-for-yank-1 repetitively for each yank-handler segment. In turn,
insert-for-yank-1 strips text properties from the inserted text according to yank-
excluded-properties. Otherwise, it is just like insert. We will stick with plain insert
since it is easier to understand.)
To begin to understand how yank and yank-pop work, it is first necessary to look
at the kill-ring-yank-pointer variable.

10.2 The kill-ring-yank-pointer Variable

kill-ring-yank-pointer is a variable, just as kill-ring is a variable. It points to something
by being bound to the value of what it points to, like any other Lisp variable.
115
Chapter 10: Yanking Text Back

Thus, if the value of the kill ring is:

("some text" "a different piece of text" "yet more text") and the kill-ring-yank-pointer
points to the second clause, the value of kill-ring-yank-pointer is:
("a different piece of text" "yet more text")
As explained in the previous chapter (see Chapter 9 “List Implementation”, page
108), the computer does not keep two different copies of the text being pointed to by
both the kill-ring and the kill-ring-yank-pointer. The words “a different piece of text”
and “yet more text” are not duplicated. Instead, the two Lisp variables point to the
same pieces of text. Here is a diagram:

kill-ring kill-ring-yank-pointer

yet more text

a different piece of text
some text nil

Both the variable kill-ring and the variable kill-ring-yank-pointer are pointers. But
the kill ring itself is usually described as if it were actually what it is composed of.
The kill-ring is spoken of as if it were the list rather than that it points to the list.
Conversely, the kill-ring-yank-pointer is spoken of as pointing to a list.
These two ways of talking about the same thing sound confusing at first but make
sense on reflection. The kill ring is generally thought of as the complete structure of
data that holds the information of what has recently been cut out of the Emacs
buffers. The kill-ring-yank-pointer on the other hand, serves to indicate—that is, to
point to—that part of the kill ring of which the first element (the car) will be
inserted.

10.3 Exercises with yank and nthcdr

• Using C-hv (describe-variable), look at the value of your kill ring. Add several
items to your kill ring; look at its value again. Using M-y (yank-pop), move all the
way around the kill ring. How many items were in your kill ring? Find the value
of kill-ring-max. Was your kill ring full, or could you have kept more blocks of
text within it?
• Using nthcdr and car, construct a series of expressions to return the first,
second, third, and fourth elements of a list.
116 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
11 Loops and Recursion
Emacs Lisp has two primary ways to cause an expression, or a series of expressions,
to be evaluated repeatedly: one uses a while loop, and the other uses recursion.
Repetition can be very valuable. For example, to move forward four sentences,
you need only write a program that will move forward one sentence and then repeat
the process four times. Since a computer does not get bored or tired, such repetitive
action does not have the deleterious effects that excessive or the wrong kinds of
repetition can have on humans.
People mostly write Emacs Lisp functions using while loops and their kin; but you
can use recursion, which provides a very powerful way to think about and then to
solve problems13.

11.1 while
The while special form tests whether the value returned by evaluating its first
argument is true or false. This is similar to what the Lisp interpreter does with an if;
what the interpreter does next, however, is different.
In a while expression, if the value returned by evaluating the first argument is
false, the Lisp interpreter skips the rest of the expression (the body of the
expression) and does not evaluate it. However, if the value is true, the Lisp
interpreter evaluates the body of the expression and then again tests whether the
first argument to while is true or false. If the value returned by evaluating the first
argument is again true, the Lisp interpreter again evaluates the body of the
expression.
The template for a while expression looks like this:
(while true-or-false-test body...)
So long as the true-or-false-test of the while expression returns a true value when
it is evaluated, the body is repeatedly evaluated. This process is called a loop since
the Lisp interpreter repeats the same thing again and again, like an airplane doing a
loop. When the result of evaluating the true-or-false-test is false, the Lisp interpreter
does not evaluate the rest of the while expression and exits the loop.
Clearly, if the value returned by evaluating the first argument to while is always
true, the body following will be evaluated again and again . . . and again . . . forever.
Conversely, if the value returned is never true, the expressions in the body will never
be evaluated. The craft of writing a while loop consists of choosing a mechanism such
that the true-or-false-test returns true just the number of times that you want the
subsequent expressions to be evaluated, and then have the test return false.

13 You can write recursive functions to be frugal or wasteful of mental or computer

resources; as it happens, methods that people find easy—that are frugal of mental resources
—sometimes use considerable computer resources. Emacs was designed to run on machines
that we now consider limited and its default settings are conservative. You may want to
increase the value of max-lisp-eval-depth. In my .emacs file, I set it to 30 times its default
value.
Section 11.1: while 117
The value returned by evaluating a while is the value of the true-or-false-test.
An interesting consequence of this is that a while loop that evaluates without error
will return nil or false regardless of whether it has looped 1 or 100 times or none at
all. A while expression that evaluates successfully never returns a true value! What
this means is that while is always evaluated for its side effects, which is to say, the
consequences of evaluating the expressions within the body of the while loop. This
makes sense. It is not the mere act of looping that is desired, but the consequences of
what happens when the expressions in the loop are repeatedly evaluated.

11.1.1 A while Loop and a List

A common way to control a while loop is to test whether a list has any elements. If it
does, the loop is repeated; but if it does not, the repetition is ended. Since this is an
important technique, we will create a short example to illustrate it.
A simple way to test whether a list has elements is to evaluate the list: if it has no
elements, it is an empty list and will return the empty list, (), which is a synonym for
nil or false. On the other hand, a list with elements will return those elements when
it is evaluated. Since Emacs Lisp considers as true any value that is not nil, a list that
returns elements will test true in a while loop.
For example, you can set the variable empty-list to nil by evaluating the following
setq expression:
(setq empty-list ())
After evaluating the setq expression, you can evaluate the variable empty-list in the
usual way, by placing the cursor after the symbol and typing C-xC-e; nil will appear in
your echo area:
empty-list
On the other hand, if you set a variable to be a list with elements, the list will
appear when you evaluate the variable, as you can see by evaluating the following
two expressions:
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger)) animals

Thus, to create a while loop that tests whether there are any items in the list
animals, the first part of the loop will be written like this:
(while animals ...
When the while tests its first argument, the variable animals is evaluated. It returns a
list. So long as the list has elements, the while considers the results of the test to be
true; but when the list is empty, it considers the results of the test to be false.
To prevent the while loop from running forever, some mechanism needs to be
provided to empty the list eventually. An oft-used technique is to have one of the
subsequent forms in the while expression set the value of the list to be the cdr of the
list. Each time the cdr function is evaluated, the list will be made shorter, until
eventually only the empty list will be left. At this point, the test of the while loop will
return false, and the arguments to the while will no longer be evaluated.
118 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
For example, the list of animals bound to the variable animals can be set to be the
cdr of the original list with the following expression:
(setq animals (cdr animals))
If you have evaluated the previous expressions and then evaluate this expression,
you will see (giraffeliontiger) appear in the echo area. If you evaluate the expression
again, (liontiger) will appear in the echo area. If you evaluate it again and yet again,
(tiger) appears and then the empty list, shown by nil.
A template for a while loop that uses the cdr function repeatedly to cause the
true-or-false-test eventually to test false looks like this:
(while test-whether-list-is-empty body...
set-list-to-cdr-of-list)
This test and use of cdr can be put together in a function that goes through a list
and prints each element of the list on a line of its own.

11.1.2 An Example: print-elements-of-list

The print-elements-of-list function illustrates a while loop with a list.
The function requires several lines for its output. If you are reading this in a
recent instance of GNU Emacs, you can evaluate the following expression inside of
Info, as usual.
If you are using an earlier version of Emacs, you need to copy the necessary
expressions to your *scratch* buffer and evaluate them there. This is because the
echo area had only one line in the earlier versions.
You can copy the expressions by marking the beginning of the region with C-SPC
(set-mark-command), moving the cursor to the end of the region and then copying
the region using M-w (kill-ring-save, which calls copy-region-as-kill and then provides
visual feedback). In the *scratch* buffer, you can yank the expressions back by typing
C-y (yank).
After you have copied the expressions to the *scratch* buffer, evaluate each
expression in turn. Be sure to evaluate the last expression,
(print-elements-of-listanimals), by typing C-uC-xC-e, that is, by giving an argument to
eval-last-sexp. This will cause the result of the evaluation to be printed in the
*scratch* buffer instead of being printed in the echo area. (Otherwise you will see
something like this in your echo area:
^Jgazelle^J^Jgiraffe^J^Jlion^J^Jtiger^Jnil, in which each ‘^J’ stands for a newline.)
You can evaluate these expressions directly in the Info buffer, and the echo area
will grow to show the results.
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(defun print-elements-of-list (list)

"Print each element of LIST on a line of its own."
(while list
(print (car list))
(setq list (cdr list))))
Section 11.1: while 119
(print-elements-of-list animals)
When you evaluate the three expressions in sequence, you will see this:
gazelle giraffe

lion

tiger nil
Each element of the list is printed on a line of its own (that is what the function
print does) and then the value returned by the function is printed. Since the last
expression in the function is the while loop, and since while loops always return nil, a
nil is printed after the last element of the list.

11.1.3 A Loop with an Incrementing Counter

A loop is not useful unless it stops when it ought. Besides controlling a loop with a
list, a common way of stopping a loop is to write the first argument as a test that
returns false when the correct number of repetitions are complete. This means that
the loop must have a counter—an expression that counts how many times the loop
repeats itself.
The test for a loop with an incrementing counter can be an expression such as
(<countdesired-number) which returns t for true if the value of count is less than the
desired-number of repetitions and nil for false if the value of count is equal to or is
greater than the desired-number. The expression that increments the count can be a
simple setq such as (setqcount(1+count)), where 1+ is a built-in function in Emacs
Lisp that adds 1 to its argument. (The expression
(1+count) has the same result as (+count1), but is easier for a human to read.)
The template for a while loop controlled by an incrementing counter looks like
this:
set-count-to-initial-value
(while (< count desired-number) ; true-or-false-test body...
(setq count (1+ count))) ; incrementer
Note that you need to set the initial value of count; usually it is set to 1.

Example with incrementing counter

Suppose you are playing on the beach and decide to make a triangle of pebbles,
putting one pebble in the first row, two in the second row, three in the third row and
so on, like this:

(About 2500 years ago, Pythagoras and others developed the beginnings of number
theory by considering questions such as this.)
Suppose you want to know how many pebbles you will need to make a triangle
with 7 rows?
120 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
Clearly, what you need to do is add up the numbers from 1 to 7. There are two
ways to do this; start with the smallest number, one, and add up the list in sequence,
1, 2, 3, 4 and so on; or start with the largest number and add the list going down: 7,
6, 5, 4 and so on. Because both mechanisms illustrate common ways of writing while
loops, we will create two examples, one counting up and the other counting down. In
this first example, we will start with 1 and add 2, 3, 4 and so on.
If you are just adding up a short list of numbers, the easiest way to do it is to add
up all the numbers at once. However, if you do not know ahead of time how many
numbers your list will have, or if you want to be prepared for a very long list, then
you need to design your addition so that what you do is repeat a simple process
many times instead of doing a more complex process once.
For example, instead of adding up all the pebbles all at once, what you can do is
add the number of pebbles in the first row, 1, to the number in the second row, 2,
and then add the total of those two rows to the third row, 3. Then you can add the
number in the fourth row, 4, to the total of the first three rows; and so on.
The critical characteristic of the process is that each repetitive action is simple. In
this case, at each step we add only two numbers, the number of pebbles in the row
and the total already found. This process of adding two numbers is repeated again
and again until the last row has been added to the total of all the preceding rows. In a
more complex loop the repetitive action might not be so simple, but it will be
simpler than doing everything all at once.

The parts of the function definition

The preceding analysis gives us the bones of our function definition: first, we will
need a variable that we can call total that will be the total number of pebbles. This
will be the value returned by the function.
Second, we know that the function will require an argument: this argument will
be the total number of rows in the triangle. It can be called number-of-rows.
Finally, we need a variable to use as a counter. We could call this variable counter,
but a better name is row-number. That is because what the counter does in this
function is count rows, and a program should be written to be as understandable as
possible.
When the Lisp interpreter first starts evaluating the expressions in the function,
the value of total should be set to zero, since we have not added anything to it. Then
the function should add the number of pebbles in the first row to the total, and then
add the number of pebbles in the second to the total, and then add the number of
pebbles in the third row to the total, and so on, until there are no more rows left to
add.
Both total and row-number are used only inside the function, so they can be
declared as local variables with let and given initial values. Clearly, the initial value
for total should be 0. The initial value of row-number should be 1, since we start with
the first row. This means that the let statement will look like this:
(let ((total 0)
(row-number 1)) body...)
Section 11.1: while 121
After the internal variables are declared and bound to their initial values, we can
begin the while loop. The expression that serves as the test should return a value of t
for true so long as the row-number is less than or equal to the number-of-rows. (If the
expression tests true only so long as the row number is less than the number of rows
in the triangle, the last row will never be added to the total; hence the row number
has to be either less than or equal to the number of rows.)
Lisp provides the <= function that returns true if the value of its first argument is
less than or equal to the value of its second argument and false otherwise. So the
expression that the while will evaluate as its test should look like this:
(<= row-number number-of-rows)
The total number of pebbles can be found by repeatedly adding the number of
pebbles in a row to the total already found. Since the number of pebbles in the row is
equal to the row number, the total can be found by adding the row number to the
total. (Clearly, in a more complex situation, the number of pebbles in the row might
be related to the row number in a more complicated way; if this were the case, the
row number would be replaced by the appropriate expression.)
(setq total (+ total row-number))
What this does is set the new value of total to be equal to the sum of adding the
number of pebbles in the row to the previous total.
After setting the value of total, the conditions need to be established for the next
repetition of the loop, if there is one. This is done by incrementing the value of the
row-number variable, which serves as a counter. After the row-number variable has
been incremented, the true-or-false-test at the beginning of the while loop tests
whether its value is still less than or equal to the value of the number-of-rows and if it
is, adds the new value of the row-number variable to the total of the previous
repetition of the loop.
The built-in Emacs Lisp function 1+ adds 1 to a number, so the row-number
variable can be incremented with this expression:
(setq row-number (1+ row-number))

Putting the function definition together

We have created the parts for the function definition; now we need to put them
together.
First, the contents of the while expression:
(while (<= row-number number-of-rows) ; true-or-false-test
(setq total (+ total row-number))
(setq row-number (1+ row-number))) ; incrementer
Along with the let expression varlist, this very nearly completes the body of the
function definition. However, it requires one final element, the need for which is
somewhat subtle.
The final touch is to place the variable total on a line by itself after the while
expression. Otherwise, the value returned by the whole function is the value of the
122 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
last expression that is evaluated in the body of the let, and this is the value returned
by the while, which is always nil.
This may not be evident at first sight. It almost looks as if the incrementing
expression is the last expression of the whole function. But that expression is part of
the body of the while; it is the last element of the list that starts with the symbol
while. Moreover, the whole of the while loop is a list within the body of the let.
In outline, the function will look like this:
(defun name-of-function (argument-list)
"documentation..."
(let (varlist)
(while (true-or-false-test) body-of-while... )
... )) ; Need final expression here.
The result of evaluating the let is what is going to be returned by the defun since
the let is not embedded within any containing list, except for the defun as a whole.
However, if the while is the last element of the let expression, the function will always
return nil. This is not what we want! Instead, what we want is the value of the
variable total. This is returned by simply placing the symbol as the last element of
the list starting with let. It gets evaluated after the preceding elements of the list are
evaluated, which means it gets evaluated after it has been assigned the correct value
for the total.
It may be easier to see this by printing the list starting with let all on one line.
This format makes it evident that the varlist and while expressions are the second
and third elements of the list starting with let, and the total is the last element:
(let (varlist) (while (true-or-false-test) body-of-while... ) total) Putting everything
together, the triangle function definition looks like this:
(defun triangle (number-of-rows) ; Version with ; incrementing counter.
"Add up the number of pebbles in a triangle. The first row has one
pebble, the second row two pebbles, the third row three pebbles, and so
on.
The argument is NUMBER-OF-ROWS." (let
((total 0)
(row-number 1))
(while (<= row-number number-of-rows)
(setq total (+ total row-number))
(setq row-number (1+ row-number))) total))
After you have installed triangle by evaluating the function, you can try it out.
Here are two examples:
(triangle 4)

(triangle 7)
The sum of the first four numbers is 10 and the sum of the first seven numbers is
28.
Section 11.1: while 123
11.1.4 Loop with a Decrementing Counter
Another common way to write a while loop is to write the test so that it determines
whether a counter is greater than zero. So long as the counter is greater than zero,
the loop is repeated. But when the counter is equal to or less than zero, the loop is
stopped. For this to work, the counter has to start out greater than zero and then be
made smaller and smaller by a form that is evaluated repeatedly.
The test will be an expression such as (>counter0) which returns t for true if the
value of counter is greater than zero, and nil for false if the value of counter is equal to
or less than zero. The expression that makes the number smaller and smaller can be
a simple setq such as (setqcounter(1-counter)), where 1- is a built-in function in
Emacs Lisp that subtracts 1 from its argument.
124 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
The template for a decrementing while loop looks like this:
(while (> counter 0) body... ; true-or-false-test

(setq counter (1- counter))) ; decrementer

Example with decrementing counter
To illustrate a loop with a decrementing counter, we will rewrite the triangle function
so the counter decreases to zero.
This is the reverse of the earlier version of the function. In this case, to find out
how many pebbles are needed to make a triangle with 3 rows, add the number of
pebbles in the third row, 3, to the number in the preceding row, 2, and then add the
total of those two rows to the row that precedes them, which is 1.
Likewise, to find the number of pebbles in a triangle with 7 rows, add the number
of pebbles in the seventh row, 7, to the number in the preceding row, which is 6, and
then add the total of those two rows to the row that precedes them, which is 5, and
so on. As in the previous example, each addition only involves adding two numbers,
the total of the rows already added up and the number of pebbles in the row that is
being added to the total. This process of adding two numbers is repeated again and
again until there are no more pebbles to add.
We know how many pebbles to start with: the number of pebbles in the last row
is equal to the number of rows. If the triangle has seven rows, the number of pebbles
in the last row is 7. Likewise, we know how many pebbles are in the preceding row:
it is one less than the number in the row.

The parts of the function definition

We start with three variables: the total number of rows in the triangle; the number
of pebbles in a row; and the total number of pebbles, which is what we want to
calculate. These variables can be named number-of-rows, number-of-pebblesin-row,
and total, respectively.
Both total and number-of-pebbles-in-row are used only inside the function and are
declared with let. The initial value of total should, of course, be zero. However, the
initial value of number-of-pebbles-in-row should be equal to the number of rows in
the triangle, since the addition will start with the longest row.
This means that the beginning of the let expression will look like this:
(let ((total 0)
(number-of-pebbles-in-row number-of-rows)) body...)
The total number of pebbles can be found by repeatedly adding the number of
pebbles in a row to the total already found, that is, by repeatedly evaluating the
following expression:
(setq total (+ total number-of-pebbles-in-row))
After the number-of-pebbles-in-row is added to the total, the number-ofpebbles-in-row
should be decremented by one, since the next time the loop repeats, the preceding
row will be added to the total.
Section 11.1: while 125
The number of pebbles in a preceding row is one less than the number of pebbles
in a row, so the built-in Emacs Lisp function 1- can be used to compute the number
of pebbles in the preceding row. This can be done with the following expression:
(setq number-of-pebbles-in-row
(1- number-of-pebbles-in-row))
Finally, we know that the while loop should stop making repeated additions when
there are no pebbles in a row. So the test for the while loop is simply:
(while (> number-of-pebbles-in-row 0)

Putting the function definition together

We can put these expressions together to create a function definition that works.
However, on examination, we find that one of the local variables is unneeded!
The function definition looks like this:
;;; First subtractive version.
(defun triangle (number-of-rows)
"Add up the number of pebbles in a triangle."
(let ((total 0)
(number-of-pebbles-in-row number-of-rows))
(while (> number-of-pebbles-in-row 0)
(setq total (+ total number-of-pebbles-in-row)) (setq number-of-
pebbles-in-row
(1- number-of-pebbles-in-row))) total))
As written, this function works.
However, we do not need number-of-pebbles-in-row.
When the triangle function is evaluated, the symbol number-of-rows will be bound
to a number, giving it an initial value. That number can be changed in the body of the
function as if it were a local variable, without any fear that such a change will effect
the value of the variable outside of the function. This is a very useful characteristic of
Lisp; it means that the variable number-of-rows can be used anywhere in the function
where number-of-pebbles-in-row is used.
 126
Section 11.2: Save your time: dolist and dotimes

Here is a second version of the function written a bit more cleanly:

(defun triangle (number) ; Second version.
"Return sum of numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive."
(let ((total 0))
(while (> number 0)
(setq total (+ total number))
(setq number (1- number))) total))
In brief, a properly written while loop will consist of three parts:
1. A test that will return false after the loop has repeated itself the correct
numberof times.
2. An expression the evaluation of which will return the value desired after
beingrepeatedly evaluated.
3. An expression to change the value passed to the true-or-false-test so that
thetest returns false after the loop has repeated itself the right number of
times.

11.2 Save your time: dolist and dotimes

In addition to while, both dolist and dotimes provide for looping. Sometimes these are
quicker to write than the equivalent while loop. Both are Lisp macros.
(See Section “Macros” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. ) dolist works like a
while loop that cdrs down a list: dolist automatically shortens the list each time it
loops—takes the cdr of the list—and binds the car of each shorter version of the list
to the first of its arguments. dotimes loops a specific number of times: you specify
the number.

The dolist Macro

Suppose, for example, you want to reverse a list, so that “first” “second” “third”
becomes “third” “second” “first”.
In practice, you would use the reverse function, like this:
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(reverse animals)
Here is how you could reverse the list using a while loop:
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(defun reverse-list-with-while (list)

"Using while, reverse the order of LIST."
(let (value) ; make sure list starts empty
(while list
(setq value (cons (car list) value))
Section 11.3: Recursion 127
(setq list (cdr list))) value))

(reverse-list-with-while animals)
And here is how you could use the dolist macro:
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(defun reverse-list-with-dolist (list)

"Using dolist, reverse the order of LIST."
(let (value) ; make sure list starts empty
(dolist (element list value)
(setq value (cons element value)))))

(reverse-list-with-dolist animals)
In Info, you can place your cursor after the closing parenthesis of each expression
and type C-xC-e; in each case, you should see
(tiger lion giraffe gazelle) in the echo
area.
For this example, the existing reverse function is obviously best. The while loop is
just like our first example (see Section 11.1.1 “A while Loop and a List”, page 116).
The while first checks whether the list has elements; if so, it constructs a new list by
adding the first element of the list to the existing list (which in the first iteration of
the loop is nil). Since the second element is prepended in front of the first element,
and the third element is prepended in front of the second element, the list is
reversed.
In the expression using a while loop, the (setqlist(cdrlist)) expression shortens the
list, so the while loop eventually stops. In addition, it provides the cons expression
with a new first element by creating a new and shorter list at each repetition of the
loop.
The dolist expression does very much the same as the while expression, except
that the dolist macro does some of the work you have to do when writing a while
expression.
Like a while loop, a dolist loops. What is different is that it automatically shortens
the list each time it loops—it cdrs down the list on its own—and it automatically
binds the car of each shorter version of the list to the first of its arguments.
In the example, the car of each shorter version of the list is referred to using the
symbol ‘element’, the list itself is called ‘list’, and the value returned is called ‘value’.
The remainder of the dolist expression is the body.
The dolist expression binds the car of each shorter version of the list to element
and then evaluates the body of the expression; and repeats the loop. The result is
returned in value.

The dotimes Macro

The dotimes macro is similar to dolist, except that it loops a specific number of times.
128 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
The first argument to dotimes is assigned the numbers 0, 1, 2 and so forth each
time around the loop. You need to provide the value of the second argument, which
is how many times the macro loops.
For example, the following binds the numbers from 0 up to, but not including, the
number 3 to the first argument, number, and then constructs a list of the three
numbers. (The first number is 0, the second number is 1, and the third number is 2;
this makes a total of three numbers in all, starting with zero as the first number.)
(let (value) ; otherwise a value is a void variable
(dotimes (number 3)
(setq value (cons number value))) value)

⇒ (2 1 0)
The way to use dotimes is to operate on some expression number number of times
and then return the result, either as a list or an atom.
Here is an example of a defun that uses dotimes to add up the number of pebbles
in a triangle.
(defun triangle-using-dotimes (number-of-rows)
"Using `dotimes', add up the number of pebbles in a triangle."
(let ((total 0)) ; otherwise a total is a void variable
(dotimes (number number-of-rows)
(setq total (+ total (1+ number)))) total))

(triangle-using-dotimes 4)

11.3 Recursion
A recursive function contains code that tells the Lisp interpreter to call a program
that runs exactly like itself, but with slightly different arguments. The code runs
exactly the same because it has the same name. However, even though the program
has the same name, it is not the same entity. It is different. In the jargon, it is a
different “instance”.
Eventually, if the program is written correctly, the slightly different arguments
will become sufficiently different from the first arguments that the final instance will
stop.

11.3.1 Building Robots: Extending the Metaphor

It is sometimes helpful to think of a running program as a robot that does a job. In
doing its job, a recursive function calls on a second robot to help it. The second robot
is identical to the first in every way, except that the second robot helps the first and
has been passed different arguments than the first.
In a recursive function, the second robot may call a third; and the third may call a
fourth, and so on. Each of these is a different entity; but all are clones.
Since each robot has slightly different instructions—the arguments will differ
from one robot to the next—the last robot should know when to stop.
Section 11.3: Recursion 129
Let’s expand on the metaphor in which a computer program is a robot.
A function definition provides the blueprints for a robot. When you install a
function definition, that is, when you evaluate a defun macro, you install the
necessary equipment to build robots. It is as if you were in a factory, setting up an
assembly line. Robots with the same name are built according to the same
blueprints. So they have the same model number, but a different serial number.
We often say that a recursive function “calls itself”. What we mean is that the
instructions in a recursive function cause the Lisp interpreter to run a different
function that has the same name and does the same job as the first, but with
different arguments.
It is important that the arguments differ from one instance to the next;
otherwise, the process will never stop.

11.3.2 The Parts of a Recursive Definition

A recursive function typically contains a conditional expression which has three
parts:
1. A true-or-false-test that determines whether the function is called again,
herecalled the do-again-test.
2. The name of the function. When this name is called, a new instance of
thefunction—a new robot, as it were—is created and told what to do.
3. An expression that returns a different value each time the function is
called,here called the next-step-expression. Consequently, the argument (or
arguments) passed to the new instance of the function will be different from
that passed to the previous instance. This causes the conditional expression,
the do-again-test, to test false after the correct number of repetitions.
Recursive functions can be much simpler than any other kind of function. Indeed,
when people first start to use them, they often look so mysteriously simple as to be
incomprehensible. Like riding a bicycle, reading a recursive function definition takes
a certain knack which is hard at first but then seems simple.
There are several different common recursive patterns. A very simple pattern
looks like this:
(defun name-of-recursive-function (argument-list)
"documentation..."
(if do-again-test body...
(name-of-recursive-function next-step-expression)))
Each time a recursive function is evaluated, a new instance of it is created and
told what to do. The arguments tell the instance what to do.
An argument is bound to the value of the next-step-expression. Each instance
runs with a different value of the next-step-expression.
The value in the next-step-expression is used in the do-again-test.
The value returned by the next-step-expression is passed to the new instance of
the function, which evaluates it (or some transmogrification of it) to determine
130 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
whether to continue or stop. The next-step-expression is designed so that the
doagain-test returns false when the function should no longer be repeated.
The do-again-test is sometimes called the stop condition, since it stops the
repetitions when it tests false.
11.3.3 Recursion with a List
The example of a while loop that printed the elements of a list of numbers can be
written recursively. Here is the code, including an expression to set the value of the
variable animals to a list.
If you are reading this in Info in Emacs, you can evaluate this expression directly
in Info. Otherwise, you must copy the example to the *scratch* buffer and evaluate
each expression there. Use C-uC-xC-e to evaluate the (print-
elementsrecursivelyanimals) expression so that the results are printed in the buffer;
otherwise the Lisp interpreter will try to squeeze the results into the one line of the
echo area.
Also, place your cursor immediately after the last closing parenthesis of the print-
elements-recursively function, before the comment. Otherwise, the Lisp interpreter
will try to evaluate the comment.
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(defun print-elements-recursively (list) "Print each element of

LIST on a line of its own.
Uses recursion."
(when list ; do-again-test
(print (car list)) ; body
(print-elements-recursively ; recursive call
(cdr list)))) ; next-step-expression
(print-elements-recursively animals)
The print-elements-recursively function first tests whether there is any content in
the list; if there is, the function prints the first element of the list, the car of the list.
Then the function invokes itself, but gives itself as its argument, not the whole list,
but the second and subsequent elements of the list, the cdr of the list.
Put another way, if the list is not empty, the function invokes another instance of
code that is similar to the initial code, but is a different thread of execution, with
different arguments than the first instance.
Put in yet another way, if the list is not empty, the first robot assembles a second
robot and tells it what to do; the second robot is a different individual from the first,
but is the same model.
When the second evaluation occurs, the when expression is evaluated and if true,
prints the first element of the list it receives as its argument (which is the second
element of the original list). Then the function calls itself with the cdr of the list it is
invoked with, which (the second time around) is the cdr of the cdr of the original list.
Section 11.3: Recursion 131
Note that although we say that the function “calls itself”, what we mean is that
the Lisp interpreter assembles and instructs a new instance of the program. The new
instance is a clone of the first, but is a separate individual.
Each time the function invokes itself, it does so on a shorter version of the
original list. It creates a new instance that works on a shorter list.
Eventually, the function invokes itself on an empty list. It creates a new instance
whose argument is nil. The conditional expression tests the value of list. Since the
value of list is nil, the when expression tests false so the then-part is not evaluated.
The function as a whole then returns nil.
When you evaluate the expression (print-elements-recursivelyanimals) in the
*scratch* buffer, you see this result:
gazelle giraffe

lion

tiger nil

11.3.4 Recursion in Place of a Counter

The triangle function described in a previous section can also be written recursively.
It looks like this:
(defun triangle-recursively (number)
"Return the sum of the numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive. Uses recursion."
(if (= number 1) ; do-again-test
1 ; then-part
(+ number ; else-part
(triangle-recursively ; recursive call
(1- number))))) ; next-step-expression
(triangle-recursively 7)
You can install this function by evaluating it and then try it by evaluating
(triangle-recursively7). (Remember to put your cursor immediately after the last
parenthesis of the function definition, before the comment.) The function evaluates
to 28.
To understand how this function works, let’s consider what happens in the
various cases when the function is passed 1, 2, 3, or 4 as the value of its argument.
First, what happens if the value of the argument is 1?
The function has an if expression after the documentation string. It tests whether
the value of number is equal to 1; if so, Emacs evaluates the then-part of the if
expression, which returns the number 1 as the value of the function. (A triangle with
one row has one pebble in it.)
Suppose, however, that the value of the argument is 2. In this case, Emacs
evaluates the else-part of the if expression.
The else-part consists of an addition, the recursive call to triangle-recursively and
a decrementing action; and it looks like this:
(+ number (triangle-recursively (1- number)))
132 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
When Emacs evaluates this expression, the innermost expression is evaluated
first; then the other parts in sequence. Here are the steps in detail:
Step 1 Evaluate the innermost expression.
The innermost expression is (1-number) so Emacs decrements the
value of number from 2 to 1.
Step 2
Evaluate the triangle-recursively function.
The Lisp interpreter creates an individual instance of triangle-
recursively. It does not matter that this function is contained within
itself. Emacs passes the result Step 1 as the argument used by this
instance of the triangle-recursively function
In this case, Emacs evaluates triangle-recursively with an argument of 1.
This means that this evaluation of triangle-recursively returns 1.

Step 3 Evaluate the value of number.

The variable number is the second element of the list that starts with +;
its value is 2.
Step 4 Evaluate the + expression.
The + expression receives two arguments, the first from the evaluation of
number (Step 3) and the second from the evaluation of
triangle-recursively (Step 2).
The result of the addition is the sum of 2 plus 1, and the number 3 is
returned, which is correct. A triangle with two rows has three pebbles
in it.

An argument of 3 or 4
Suppose that triangle-recursively is called with an argument of 3.
Step 1 Evaluate the do-again-test.
The if expression is evaluated first. This is the do-again test and
returns false, so the else-part of the if expression is evaluated. (Note
that in this example, the do-again-test causes the function to call itself
when it tests false, not when it tests true.)
Step 2 Evaluate the innermost expression of the else-part.
The innermost expression of the else-part is evaluated, which
decrements 3 to 2. This is the next-step-expression.
Step 3 Evaluate the triangle-recursively function.
The number 2 is passed to the triangle-recursively function.
We already know what happens when Emacs evaluates triangle-
recursively with an argument of 2. After going through the sequence of
actions described earlier, it returns a value of 3. So that is what will
happen here.
Section 11.3: Recursion 133
Step 4 Evaluate the addition.
3 will be passed as an argument to the addition and will be added to
the number with which the function was called, which is 3.
The value returned by the function as a whole will be 6.
Now that we know what will happen when triangle-recursively is called with an
argument of 3, it is evident what will happen if it is called with an argument of
4:
In the recursive call, the evaluation of
(triangle-recursively (1- 4)) will return
the value of evaluating
(triangle-recursively 3) which is 6 and this value will be added to 4 by the
addition in the third line.
The value returned by the function as a whole will be 10.
Each time triangle-recursively is evaluated, it evaluates a version of itself— a
different instance of itself—with a smaller argument, until the argument is small
enough so that it does not evaluate itself.
Note that this particular design for a recursive function requires that operations
be deferred.
Before (triangle-recursively7) can calculate its answer, it must call
(triangle-recursively6); and before (triangle-recursively6) can calculate its answer, it
must call (triangle-recursively5); and so on. That is to say, the calculation that (triangle-
recursively7) makes must be deferred until (triangle-recursively6) makes its
calculation; and (triangle-recursively 6) must defer until (triangle-recursively5)
completes; and so on.
If each of these instances of triangle-recursively are thought of as different robots,
the first robot must wait for the second to complete its job, which must wait until the
third completes, and so on.
There is a way around this kind of waiting, which we will discuss in Section
11.3.7 “Recursion without Deferments”, page 136.

11.3.5 Recursion Example Using cond

The version of triangle-recursively described earlier is written with the if special
form. It can also be written using another special form called cond. The name of the
special form cond is an abbreviation of the word ‘conditional’.
Although the cond special form is not used as often in the Emacs Lisp sources as
if, it is used often enough to justify explaining it.
The template for a cond expression looks like this:
(cond body...)
where the body is a series of lists.
Written out more fully, the template looks like this:
(cond
(first-true-or-false-test first-consequent)
134 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
(second-true-or-false-test second-consequent)
(third-true-or-false-test third-consequent)
...)
When the Lisp interpreter evaluates the cond expression, it evaluates the first
element (the car or true-or-false-test) of the first expression in a series of
expressions within the body of the cond.
If the true-or-false-test returns nil the rest of that expression, the consequent, is
skipped and the true-or-false-test of the next expression is evaluated. When an
expression is found whose true-or-false-test returns a value that is not nil, the
consequent of that expression is evaluated. The consequent can be one or more
expressions. If the consequent consists of more than one expression, the expressions
are evaluated in sequence and the value of the last one is returned. If the expression
does not have a consequent, the value of the true-or-false-test is returned.
If none of the true-or-false-tests test true, the cond expression returns nil.
Written using cond, the triangle function looks like this:
(defun triangle-using-cond (number) (cond ((<=
number 0) 0)
((= number 1) 1)
((> number 1)
(+ number (triangle-using-cond (1- number))))))
In this example, the cond returns 0 if the number is less than or equal to 0, it returns
1 if the number is 1 and it evaluates (+number(triangle-using-cond (1-number))) if the
number is greater than 1.

11.3.6 Recursive Patterns

Here are three common recursive patterns. Each involves a list. Recursion does not
need to involve lists, but Lisp is designed for lists and this provides a sense of its
primal capabilities.

Recursive Pattern: every

In the every recursive pattern, an action is performed on every element of a list.
Section 11.3: Recursion 135

•
•
The basic pattern is:
If a list be empty, return nil.
Else, act on the beginning of the list (the car of the list)
− through a recursive call by the function on the rest (the cdr) of the list,
− and, optionally, combine the acted-on element, using cons, with the results
of acting on the rest.
Here is an example:
(defun square-each (numbers-list)
"Square each of a NUMBERS LIST, recursively."
(if (not numbers-list) ; do-again-test nil
(cons
(* (car numbers-list) (car numbers-list))
(square-each (cdr numbers-list))))) ; next-step-expression

(square-each '(1 2 3))

⇒ (1 4 9)
If numbers-list is empty, do nothing. But if it has content, construct a list combining
the square of the first number in the list with the result of the recursive call.
(The example follows the pattern exactly: nil is returned if the numbers’ list is
empty. In practice, you would write the conditional so it carries out the action when
the numbers’ list is not empty.)
The print-elements-recursively function (see Section 11.3.3 “Recursion with a List”,
page 129) is another example of an every pattern, except in this case, rather than
bring the results together using cons, we print each element of output.
The print-elements-recursively function looks like this:
(setq animals '(gazelle giraffe lion tiger))

(defun print-elements-recursively (list) "Print each element of

LIST on a line of its own.
Uses recursion."
(when list ; do-again-test
(print (car list)) ; body
(print-elements-recursively ; recursive call
(cdr list)))) ; next-step-expression
(print-elements-recursively animals)
The pattern for print-elements-recursively is:
When the list is empty, do nothing.
136 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion

•
•
But when the list has at least one element,
− act on the beginning of the list (the car of the list),
− and make a recursive call on the rest (the cdr) of the list.

Recursive Pattern: accumulate

Another recursive pattern is called the accumulate pattern. In the accumulate
recursive pattern, an action is performed on every element of a list and the result of
that action is accumulated with the results of performing the action on the other
elements.
This is very like the every pattern using cons, except that cons is not used, but
some other combiner.
The pattern is:
• If a list be empty, return zero or some other constant.
• Else, act on the beginning of the list (the car of the list),
− and combine that acted-on element, using + or some other combining
function, with
− a recursive call by the function on the rest (the cdr) of the list.
Here is an example:
(defun add-elements (numbers-list)
"Add the elements of NUMBERS-LIST together." (if (not
numbers-list)
0
(+ (car numbers-list) (add-elements (cdr numbers-list)))))

(add-elements '(1 2 3 4))

⇒ 10
See Section 14.9.2 “Making a List of Files”, page 179, for an example of the
accumulate pattern.

Recursive Pattern: keep

A third recursive pattern is called the keep pattern. In the keep recursive pattern,
each element of a list is tested; the element is acted on and the results are kept only
if the element meets a criterion.
Again, this is very like the every pattern, except the element is skipped unless it
meets a criterion.
The pattern has three parts:
Section 11.3: Recursion 137

•
•
If a list be empty, return nil.
Else, if the beginning of the list (the car of the list) passes a test
− act on that element and combine it, using cons with
− a recursive call by the function on the rest (the cdr) of the list.
• Otherwise, if the beginning of the list (the car of the list) fails the test
− skip on that element,
− and, recursively call the function on the rest (the cdr) of the list.
Here is an example that uses cond:
(defun keep-three-letter-words (word-list)
"Keep three letter words in WORD-LIST." (cond
;; First do-again-test: stop-condition
((not word-list) nil)

;; Second do-again-test: when to act

((eq 3 (length (symbol-name (car word-list))))
;; combine acted-on element with recursive call on shorter list
(cons (car word-list) (keep-three-letter-words (cdr word-list))))

;; Third do-again-test: when to skip element;

;; recursively call shorter list with next-step expression
(t (keep-three-letter-words (cdr word-list)))))

(keep-three-letter-words '(one two three four five six))

⇒ (one two six)
It goes without saying that you need not use nil as the test for when to stop; and
you can, of course, combine these patterns.

11.3.7 Recursion without Deferments

Let’s consider again what happens with the triangle-recursively function. We will find
that the intermediate calculations are deferred until all can be done.
Here is the function definition:
(defun triangle-recursively (number)
"Return the sum of the numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive. Uses recursion."
(if (= number 1) ; do-again-test
1 ; then-part
(+ number ; else-part
(triangle-recursively ; recursive call
(1- number))))) ; next-step-expression
138 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion

•
•
What happens when we call this function with an argument of 7?
The first instance of the triangle-recursively function adds the number 7 to the
value returned by a second instance of triangle-recursively, an instance that has been
passed an argument of 6. That is to say, the first calculation is:
(+ 7 (triangle-recursively 6))
Section 11.3: Recursion 139
The first instance of triangle-recursively—you may want to think of it as a little robot
—cannot complete its job. It must hand off the calculation for
(triangle-recursively6) to a second instance of the program, to a second robot. This
second individual is completely different from the first one; it is, in the jargon, a
“different instantiation”. Or, put another way, it is a different robot. It is the same
model as the first; it calculates triangle numbers recursively; but it has a different
serial number.
And what does (triangle-recursively6) return? It returns the number 6 added to
the value returned by evaluating triangle-recursively with an argument of 5. Using the
robot metaphor, it asks yet another robot to help it.
Now the total is:
(+ 7 6 (triangle-recursively 5)) And what
happens next?
(+ 7 6 5 (triangle-recursively 4))
Each time triangle-recursively is called, except for the last time, it creates another
instance of the program—another robot—and asks it to make a calculation.
Eventually, the full addition is set up and performed:
(+ 7 6 5 4 3 2 1)
This design for the function defers the calculation of the first step until the
second can be done, and defers that until the third can be done, and so on. Each
deferment means the computer must remember what is being waited on. This is not
a problem when there are only a few steps, as in this example. But it can be a
problem when there are more steps.

11.3.8 No Deferment Solution

The solution to the problem of deferred operations is to write in a manner that does
not defer operations14. This requires writing to a different pattern, often one that
involves writing two function definitions, an initialization function and a helper
function.
The initialization function sets up the job; the helper function does the work.
Here are the two function definitions for adding up numbers. They are so simple,
I find them hard to understand.
(defun triangle-initialization (number)
"Return the sum of the numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive. This is the
initialization component of a two function duo that uses recursion."
(triangle-recursive-helper 0 0 number))
(defun triangle-recursive-helper (sum counter number) "Return SUM,
using COUNTER, through NUMBER inclusive. This is the helper
component of a two function duo that uses recursion."
(if (> counter number) sum

14 The phrase tail recursive is used to describe such a process, one that uses constant
space.
140 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
(triangle-recursive-helper (+ sum counter) ; sum (1+ counter) ;
counter number))) ; number
Install both function definitions by evaluating
them, then call triangle-initialization with 2 rows:
(triangle-initialization 2)
⇒3
The initialization function calls the first instance of the helper function with
three arguments: zero, zero, and a number which is the number of rows in the
triangle.
The first two arguments passed to the helper function are initialization values.
These values are changed when triangle-recursive-helper invokes new instances.15
Let’s see what happens when we have a triangle that has one row. (This triangle
will have one pebble in it!) triangle-initialization will call its helper with the
arguments 001. That
function will run the conditional test whether (>counternumber):
(> 0 1)
and find that the result is false, so it will invoke the else-part of the if clause:
(triangle-recursive-helper
(+ sum counter) ; sum plus counter ⇒ sum
(1+ counter) ; increment counter ⇒ counter number) ; number
stays the same
Section 11.4: Looping Exercise

which will first compute:

(triangle-recursive-helper (+ 0 0) ; sum
(1+ 0) ; counter
1) ; number
which is:

(triangle-recursive-helper 0 1 1)
Again, (>counternumber) will be false, so again, the Lisp interpreter will evaluate
triangle-recursive-helper, creating a new instance with new arguments. This new
instance will be;
(triangle-recursive-helper
(+ sum counter) ; sum plus counter ⇒ sum
(1+ counter) ; increment counter ⇒ counter number) ; number
stays the same

15 The jargon is mildly confusing: triangle-recursive-helper uses a process that is iterative

in a procedure that is recursive. The process is called iterative because the computer need
only record the three values, sum, counter, and number; the procedure is recursive because
the function calls itself. On the other hand, both the process and the procedure used by
triangle-recursively are called recursive. The word “recursive” has different meanings in the
two contexts.
 141
which is:

(triangle-recursive-helper 1 2 1)
In this case, the (>counternumber) test will be true! So the instance will return the
value of the sum, which will be 1, as expected.
Now, let’s pass triangle-initialization an argument of 2, to find out how many
pebbles there are in a triangle with two rows.
That function calls (triangle-recursive-helper002).
In stages, the instances called will be:
sum counter number
(triangle-recursive-helper 0 1 2)

(triangle-recursive-helper 1 2 2)

(triangle-recursive-helper 3 3 2)
When the last instance is called, the (>counternumber) test will be true, so the
instance will return the value of sum, which will be 3.
This kind of pattern helps when you are writing functions that can use many
resources in a computer.

11.4 Looping Exercise

• Write a function similar to triangle in which each row has a value which is the
square of the row number. Use a while loop.
• Write a function similar to triangle that multiplies instead of adds the values.
• Rewrite these two functions recursively. Rewrite these functions using cond.
• Write a function for Texinfo mode that creates an index entry at the beginning
of a paragraph for every ‘@dfn’ within the paragraph. (In a Texinfo file, ‘@dfn’
marks a definition. This book is written in Texinfo.)
Many of the functions you will need are described in two of the previous
chapters, Chapter 8 “Cutting and Storing Text”, page 85, and Chapter 10
“Yanking Text Back”, page 113. If you use forward-paragraph to put the index
entry at the beginning of the paragraph, you will have to use C-hf (describe-
function) to find out how to make the command go backwards.
For more information, see “Indicating Definitions, Commands, etc.” in Texinfo,
The GNU Documentation Format.
142 Chapter 11: Loops and Recursion
Section 12.1: The Regular Expression for sentence-end

12 Regular Expression Searches

Regular expression searches are used extensively in GNU Emacs. The two functions,
forward-sentence and forward-paragraph, illustrate these searches well. They use
regular expressions to find where to move point. The phrase “regular expression” is
often written as “regexp”.
Regular expression searches are described in Section “Regular Expression
Search” in The GNU Emacs Manual, as well as in Section “Regular Expressions” in The
GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. In writing this chapter, I am presuming that you
have at least a mild acquaintance with them. The major point to remember is that
regular expressions permit you to search for patterns as well as for literal strings of
characters. For example, the code in forward-sentence searches for the pattern of
possible characters that could mark the end of a sentence, and moves point to that
spot.
Before looking at the code for the forward-sentence function, it is worth
considering what the pattern that marks the end of a sentence must be. The pattern
is discussed in the next section; following that is a description of the regular
expression search function, re-search-forward. The forward-sentence function is
described in the section following. Finally, the forward-paragraph function is
described in the last section of this chapter. forward-paragraph is a complex function
that introduces several new features.

12.1 The Regular Expression for sentence-end

The symbol sentence-end is bound to the pattern that marks the end of a sentence.
What should this regular expression be?
Clearly, a sentence may be ended by a period, a question mark, or an exclamation
mark. Indeed, in English, only clauses that end with one of those three characters
should be considered the end of a sentence. This means that the pattern should
include the character set:
[.?!]
However, we do not want forward-sentence merely to jump to a period, a question
mark, or an exclamation mark, because such a character might be used in the middle
of a sentence. A period, for example, is used after abbreviations. So other
information is needed.
According to convention, you type two spaces after every sentence, but only one
space after a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark in the body of a
sentence. So a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark followed by two
spaces is a good indicator of an end of sentence. However, in a file, the two spaces
may instead be a tab or the end of a line. This means that the regular expression
should include these three items as alternatives.
 143
This group of alternatives will look like this:
\\($\\| \\| \\)
^ ^^
TAB SPC
Here, ‘$’ indicates the end of the line, and I have pointed out where the tab and two
spaces are inserted in the expression. Both are inserted by putting the actual
characters into the expression.
Two backslashes, ‘\\’, are required before the parentheses and vertical bars: the
first backslash quotes the following backslash in Emacs; and the second indicates
that the following character, the parenthesis or the vertical bar, is special.
Also, a sentence may be followed by one or more carriage returns, like this:
[
]*
Like tabs and spaces, a carriage return is inserted into a regular expression by
inserting it literally. The asterisk indicates that the RET is repeated zero or more
times.
But a sentence end does not consist only of a period, a question mark or an
exclamation mark followed by appropriate space: a closing quotation mark or a
closing brace of some kind may precede the space. Indeed more than one such mark
or brace may precede the space. These require a expression that looks like this:
[]\"')}]*
In this expression, the first ‘]’ is the first character in the expression; the second
character is ‘"’, which is preceded by a ‘\’ to tell Emacs the ‘"’ is not special. The last
three characters are ‘'’, ‘)’, and ‘}’.
All this suggests what the regular expression pattern for matching the end of a
sentence should be; and, indeed, if we evaluate sentence-end we find that it returns
the following value:
sentence-end
⇒ "[.?!][]\"')}]*\\($\\| \\| \\)[
]*"
(Well, not in GNU Emacs 22; that is because of an effort to make the process simpler
and to handle more glyphs and languages. When the value of sentence-end is nil, then
use the value defined by the function sentence-end. (Here is a use of the difference
between a value and a function in Emacs Lisp.) The function returns a value
constructed from the variables sentence-end-base, sentence-end-doublespace,
sentence-end-without-period, and sentence-end-without-space. The critical variable is
sentence-end-base; its global value is similar to the one described above but it also
contains two additional quotation marks. These have differing degrees of curliness.
The sentence-end-without-period variable, when true, tells Emacs that a sentence
may end without a period, such as text in Thai.)
144 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches
12.2 The re-search-forward Function
The re-search-forward function is very like the search-forward function. (See
Section 8.1.3 “The search-forward Function”, page 87.)
Section 12.3: forward-sentence

re-search-forward searches for a regular expression. If the search is successful, it

leaves point immediately after the last character in the target. If the search is
backwards, it leaves point just before the first character in the target. You may tell re-
search-forward to return t for true. (Moving point is therefore a side effect.) Like
search-forward, the re-search-forward function takes four arguments:
1. The first argument is the regular expression that the function searches for.The
regular expression will be a string between quotation marks.
2. The optional second argument limits how far the function will search; it is
abound, which is specified as a position in the buffer.
3. The optional third argument specifies how the function responds to failure: nil as
the third argument causes the function to signal an error (and print a message)
when the search fails; any other value causes it to return nil if the search fails
and t if the search succeeds.
4. The optional fourth argument is the repeat count. A negative repeat countcauses
re-search-forward to search backwards.
The template for re-search-forward looks like this:
(re-search-forward "regular-expression" limit-of-search what-to-do-if-
search-fails repeat-count)
The second, third, and fourth arguments are optional. However, if you want to
pass a value to either or both of the last two arguments, you must also pass a value
to all the preceding arguments. Otherwise, the Lisp interpreter will mistake which
argument you are passing the value to.
In the forward-sentence function, the regular expression will be the value of the
variable sentence-end. In simple form, that is:
"[.?!][]\"')}]*\\($\\| \\| \\)[
]*"
The limit of the search will be the end of the paragraph (since a sentence cannot go
beyond a paragraph). If the search fails, the function will return nil; and the repeat
count will be provided by the argument to the forward-sentence function.

12.3 forward-sentence
The command to move the cursor forward a sentence is a straightforward
illustration of how to use regular expression searches in Emacs Lisp. Indeed, the
function looks longer and more complicated than it is; this is because the function is
 145
designed to go backwards as well as forwards; and, optionally, over more than one
sentence. The function is usually bound to the key command M-e.
Here is the code for forward-sentence:
(defun forward-sentence (&optional arg)
"Move forward to next end of sentence. With argument, repeat.
With negative argument, move backward repeatedly to start of sentence.

The variable `sentence-end' is a regular expression that matches ends of sentences. Also,
every paragraph boundary terminates sentences as well."
(interactive "p")
(or arg (setq arg 1))
(let ((opoint (point))
(sentence-end (sentence-end)))
(while (< arg 0)
(let ((pos (point))
(par-beg (save-excursion (start-of-paragraph-text) (point)))) (if (and (re-search-
backward sentence-end par-beg t)
(or (< (match-end 0) pos)
(re-search-backward sentence-end par-beg t)))
(goto-char (match-end 0))
(goto-char par-beg)))
(setq arg (1+ arg)))
(while (> arg 0)
(let ((par-end (save-excursion (end-of-paragraph-text) (point)))) (if (re-search-forward
sentence-end par-end t)
(skip-chars-backward " \t\n")
(goto-char par-end)))
(setq arg (1- arg)))
(constrain-to-field nil opoint t)))
The function looks long at first sight and it is best to look at its skeleton first, and
then its muscle. The way to see the skeleton is to look at the expressions that start in
the left-most columns:
(defun forward-sentence (&optional arg)
"documentation..."
(interactive "p")
(or arg (setq arg 1))
(let ((opoint (point)) (sentence-end (sentence-end)))
(while (< arg 0)
(let ((pos (point))
(par-beg (save-excursion (start-of-paragraph-text) (point)))) rest-of-body-of-
while-loop-when-going-backwards
(while (> arg 0)
(let ((par-end (save-excursion (end-of-paragraph-text) (point)))) rest-of-body-of-while-
loop-when-going-forwards
handle-forms-and-equivalent
146 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches
This looks much simpler! The function definition consists of documentation, an
interactive expression, an or expression, a let expression, and while loops.
Let’s look at each of these parts in turn.
We note that the documentation is thorough and understandable.
The function has an interactive"p" declaration. This means that the processed
prefix argument, if any, is passed to the function as its argument. (This will Section
12.3: forward-sentence

be a number.) If the function is not passed an argument (it is optional) then the
argument arg will be bound to 1.
When forward-sentence is called non-interactively without an argument, arg is
bound to nil. The or expression handles this. What it does is either leave the value of
arg as it is, but only if arg is bound to a value; or it sets the value of arg to 1, in the
case when arg is bound to nil.
Next is a let. That specifies the values of two local variables, opoint and sentence-
end. The local value of point, from before the search, is used in the constrain-to-field
function which handles forms and equivalents. The sentence-end variable is set by
the sentence-end function.

The while loops

Two while loops follow. The first while has a true-or-false-test that tests true if the
prefix argument for forward-sentence is a negative number. This is for going
backwards. The body of this loop is similar to the body of the second while clause,
but it is not exactly the same. We will skip this while loop and concentrate on the
second while loop.
The second while loop is for moving point forward. Its skeleton looks like this:
(while (> arg 0) ; true-or-false-test
(let varlist
(if (true-or-false-test) then-part
else-part
(setq arg (1- arg)))) ; while loop decrementer
The while loop is of the decrementing kind. (See Section 11.1.4 “A Loop with a
Decrementing Counter”, page 122.) It has a true-or-false-test that tests true so long
as the counter (in this case, the variable arg) is greater than zero; and it has a
decrementer that subtracts 1 from the value of the counter every time the loop
repeats.
If no prefix argument is given to forward-sentence, which is the most common
way the command is used, this while loop will run once, since the value of arg will be
1.
The body of the while loop consists of a let expression, which creates and binds a
local variable, and has, as its body, an if expression.
 147
The body of the while loop looks like this:
(let ((par-end
(save-excursion (end-of-paragraph-text) (point)))) (if (re-search-
forward sentence-end par-end t)
(skip-chars-backward " \t\n")
(goto-char par-end)))
The let expression creates and binds the local variable par-end. As we shall see,
this local variable is designed to provide a bound or limit to the regular expression
search. If the search fails to find a proper sentence ending in the paragraph, it will
stop on reaching the end of the paragraph.
But first, let us examine how par-end is bound to the value of the end of the
paragraph. What happens is that the let sets the value of par-end to the value
returned when the Lisp interpreter evaluates the expression
(save-excursion (end-of-paragraph-text) (point))
In this expression, (end-of-paragraph-text) moves point to the end of the paragraph,
(point) returns the value of point, and then save-excursion restores point to its
original position. Thus, the let binds par-end to the value returned by the save-
excursion expression, which is the position of the end of the paragraph. (The end-of-
paragraph-text function uses forward-paragraph, which we will discuss shortly.)
Emacs next evaluates the body of the let, which is an if expression that looks like
this:
(if (re-search-forward sentence-end par-end t) ; if-part
(skip-chars-backward " \t\n") ; then-part
(goto-char par-end))) ; else-part
The if tests whether its first argument is true and if so, evaluates its then-part;
otherwise, the Emacs Lisp interpreter evaluates the else-part. The true-or-false-test
of the if expression is the regular expression search.
It may seem odd to have what looks like the real work of the forward-sentence
function buried here, but this is a common way this kind of operation is carried out
in Lisp.

The regular expression search

The re-search-forward function searches for the end of the sentence, that is, for the
pattern defined by the sentence-end regular expression. If the pattern is found—if
the end of the sentence is found—then the re-search-forward function does two
things:
1. The re-search-forward function carries out a side effect, which is to move point to
the end of the occurrence found.
2. The re-search-forward function returns a value of true. This is the value received
by the if, and means that the search was successful.
The side effect, the movement of point, is completed before the if function is handed
the value returned by the successful conclusion of the search.
148 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches
When the if function receives the value of true from a successful call to re-search-
forward, the if evaluates the then-part, which is the expression
Section 12.4: forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions 149

(skip-chars-backward"\t\n"). This expression moves backwards over any blank spaces,

tabs or carriage returns until a printed character is found and then leaves point after
the character. Since point has already been moved to the end of the pattern that
marks the end of the sentence, this action leaves point right after the closing printed
character of the sentence, which is usually a period.
On the other hand, if the re-search-forward function fails to find a pattern marking
the end of the sentence, the function returns false. The false then causes the if to
evaluate its third argument, which is (goto-charpar-end): it moves point to the end of
the paragraph.
(And if the text is in a form or equivalent, and point may not move fully, then the
constrain-to-field function comes into play.)
Regular expression searches are exceptionally useful and the pattern illustrated
by re-search-forward, in which the search is the test of an if expression, is handy. You
will see or write code incorporating this pattern often.

12.4 forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions

The forward-paragraph function moves point forward to the end of the paragraph. It
is usually bound to M-} and makes use of a number of functions that are important in
themselves, including let*, match-beginning, and looking-at.
The function definition for forward-paragraph is considerably longer than the
function definition for forward-sentence because it works with a paragraph, each line of
which may begin with a fill prefix.
A fill prefix consists of a string of characters that are repeated at the beginning of
each line. For example, in Lisp code, it is a convention to start each line of a
paragraph-long comment with ‘;;; ’. In Text mode, four blank spaces make up another
common fill prefix, creating an indented paragraph. (See Section “Fill Prefix” in The
GNU Emacs Manual, for more information about fill prefixes.)
The existence of a fill prefix means that in addition to being able to find the end of
a paragraph whose lines begin on the left-most column, the forward-paragraph
function must be able to find the end of a paragraph when all or many of the lines in
the buffer begin with the fill prefix.
Moreover, it is sometimes practical to ignore a fill prefix that exists, especially when
blank lines separate paragraphs. This is an added complication.
Rather than print all of the forward-paragraph function, we will only print parts of it.
Read without preparation, the function can be daunting!
In outline, the function looks like this:
(defun forward-paragraph (&optional arg)
"documentation..."
(interactive "p")
(or arg (setq arg 1))
(let* varlist
150 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches

(while (and (< arg 0) (not (bobp))) ... ; backward-moving-code

(while (and (> arg 0) (not (eobp))) ... ; forward-moving-code

The first parts of the function are routine: the function’s argument list consists of
one optional argument. Documentation follows.
The lower case ‘p’ in the interactive declaration means that the processed prefix
argument, if any, is passed to the function. This will be a number, and is the repeat
count of how many paragraphs point will move. The or expression in the next line
handles the common case when no argument is passed to the function, which occurs
if the function is called from other code rather than interactively. This case was
described earlier. (See Section 12.3 “forward-sentence”, page 143.) Now we reach the
end of the familiar part of this function.

The let* expression

The next line of the forward-paragraph function begins a let* expression (see
“let* introduced”, page 56), in which Emacs binds a total of seven variables: opoint,
fill-prefix-regexp, parstart, parsep, sp-parstart, start, and found-start. The first part of the
let* expression looks like below:
(let* ((opoint (point))
(fill-prefix-regexp
(and fill-prefix (not (equal fill-prefix ""))
(not paragraph-ignore-fill-prefix)
(regexp-quote fill-prefix)))
;; Remove ^ from paragraph-start and paragraph-sep if they are there.
;; These regexps shouldn't be anchored, because we look for them ;; starting at the
left-margin. This allows paragraph commands to ;; work normally with indented text.
;; This hack will not find problem cases like "whatever\\|^something". (parstart (if (and
(not (equal "" paragraph-start))
(equal ?^ (aref paragraph-start 0)))
(substring paragraph-start 1) paragraph-start))
(parsep (if (and (not (equal "" paragraph-separate))
(equal ?^ (aref paragraph-separate 0)))
(substring paragraph-separate 1) paragraph-separate))
(parsep
(if fill-prefix-regexp
(concat parsep "\\|" fill-prefix-regexp "[ \t]*$")
parsep))
;; This is used for searching.
(sp-parstart (concat "^[ \t]*\\(?:" parstart "\\|" parsep "\\)")) start found-start)
...)
The variable parsep appears twice, first, to remove instances of ‘^’, and second, to
handle fill prefixes.
Section 12.4: forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions 151

The variable opoint is just the value of point. As you can guess, it is used in a
constrain-to-field expression, just as in forward-sentence.
The variable fill-prefix-regexp is set to the value returned by evaluating the following
list:
(and fill-prefix
(not (equal fill-prefix ""))
(not paragraph-ignore-fill-prefix)
(regexp-quote fill-prefix))
This is an expression whose first element is the and special form.
As we learned earlier (see “The kill-new function”, page 97), the and special form
evaluates each of its arguments until one of the arguments returns a value of nil, in
which case the and expression returns nil; however, if none of the arguments returns
a value of nil, the value resulting from evaluating the last argument is returned.
(Since such a value is not nil, it is considered true in Lisp.) In other words, an and
expression returns a true value only if all its arguments are true.
In this case, the variable fill-prefix-regexp is bound to a non-nil value only if the
following four expressions produce a true (i.e., a non-nil) value when they are
evaluated; otherwise, fill-prefix-regexp is bound to nil.

fill-prefix
When this variable is evaluated, the value of the fill prefix, if any, is returned.
If there is no fill prefix, this variable returns nil.

(not(equalfill-prefix"")
This expression checks whether an existing fill prefix is an empty
string, that is, a string with no characters in it. An empty string is not a
useful fill prefix.

(notparagraph-ignore-fill-prefix)
This expression returns nil if the variable paragraph-ignore-fillprefix has been
turned on by being set to a true value such as t.

(regexp-quotefill-prefix)
This is the last argument to the and special form. If all the arguments to
the and are true, the value resulting from evaluating this expression
will be returned by the and expression and bound to the variable fill-
prefix-regexp,
The result of evaluating this and expression successfully is that fill-prefixregexp will
be bound to the value of fill-prefix as modified by the regexp-quote function. What
regexp-quote does is read a string and return a regular expression that will exactly
match the string and match nothing else. This means that fill-prefix-regexp will be set
152 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches

to a value that will exactly match the fill prefix if the fill prefix exists. Otherwise, the
variable will be set to nil.
The next two local variables in the let* expression are designed to remove
instances of ‘^’ from parstart and parsep, the local variables which indicate the
paragraph start and the paragraph separator. The next expression sets parsep again.
That is to handle fill prefixes.
This is the setting that requires the definition call let* rather than let. The true-
or-false-test for the if depends on whether the variable fill-prefix-regexp evaluates to
nil or some other value.
If fill-prefix-regexp does not have a value, Emacs evaluates the else-part of the if
expression and binds parsep to its local value. (parsep is a regular expression that
matches what separates paragraphs.)
But if fill-prefix-regexp does have a value, Emacs evaluates the then-part of the if
expression and binds parsep to a regular expression that includes the fill-prefix-
regexp as part of the pattern.
Specifically, parsep is set to the original value of the paragraph separate regular
expression concatenated with an alternative expression that consists of the fill-prefix-
regexp followed by optional whitespace to the end of the line. The whitespace is
defined by "[\t]*$".) The ‘\\|’ defines this portion of the regexp as an alternative to
parsep.
According to a comment in the code, the next local variable, sp-parstart, is used for
searching, and then the final two, start and found-start, are set to nil.
Now we get into the body of the let*. The first part of the body of the let* deals
with the case when the function is given a negative argument and is therefore
moving backwards. We will skip this section.

The forward motion while loop

The second part of the body of the let* deals with forward motion. It is a while loop
that repeats itself so long as the value of arg is greater than zero. In the most
common use of the function, the value of the argument is 1, so the body of the while
loop is evaluated exactly once, and the cursor moves forward one paragraph.
This part handles three situations: when point is between paragraphs, when there is a
fill prefix and when there is no fill prefix.
The while loop looks like this:
;; going forwards and not at the end of the buffer
(while (and (> arg 0) (not (eobp)))

;; between paragraphs
;; Move forward over separator lines... (while (and (not
(eobp))
(progn (move-to-left-margin) (not (eobp)))
(looking-at parsep))
Section 12.4: forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions 153

(forward-line 1))
;; This decrements the loop
(unless (eobp) (setq arg (1- arg))) ;; ... and one
more line. (forward-line 1)

(if fill-prefix-regexp
;; There is a fill prefix; it overrides parstart;
;; we go forward line by line (while (and (not
(eobp))
(progn (move-to-left-margin) (not (eobp)))
(not (looking-at parsep))
(looking-at fill-prefix-regexp))
(forward-line 1))
;; There is no fill prefix;
;; we go forward character by character
(while (and (re-search-forward sp-parstart nil 1)
(progn (setq start (match-beginning 0))
(goto-char start)
(not (eobp)))
(progn (move-to-left-margin)
(not (looking-at parsep))) (or (not
(looking-at parstart)) (and use-hard-newlines
(not (get-text-property (1- start) 'hard))))) (forward-char 1))

;; and if there is no fill prefix and if we are not at the end,

;; go to whatever was found in the regular expression search
;; for sp-parstart
(if (< (point) (point-max))
(goto-char start))))
We can see that this is a decrementing counter while loop, using the expression
(setqarg(1-arg)) as the decrementer. That expression is not far from the while, but is
hidden in another Lisp macro, an unless macro. Unless we are at the end of the buffer
—that is what the eobp function determines; it is an abbreviation of ‘EndOfBufferP’—
we decrease the value of arg by one.
(If we are at the end of the buffer, we cannot go forward any more and the next
loop of the while expression will test false since the test is an and with (not (eobp)).
The not function means exactly as you expect; it is another name for null, a function
that returns true when its argument is false.)
Interestingly, the loop count is not decremented until we leave the space between
paragraphs, unless we come to the end of buffer or stop seeing the local value of the
paragraph separator.
That second while also has a (move-to-left-margin) expression. The function is self-
explanatory. It is inside a progn expression and not the last element of its body, so it
154 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches

is only invoked for its side effect, which is to move point to the left margin of the
current line.
The looking-at function is also self-explanatory; it returns true if the text after point
matches the regular expression given as its argument.
The rest of the body of the loop looks difficult at first, but makes sense as you come to
understand it.
First consider what happens if there is a fill prefix:
(if fill-prefix-regexp
;; There is a fill prefix; it overrides parstart;
;; we go forward line by line (while (and (not
(eobp))
(progn (move-to-left-margin) (not (eobp)))
(not (looking-at parsep))
(looking-at fill-prefix-regexp))
(forward-line 1))
This expression moves point forward line by line so long as four conditions are true:
1. Point is not at the end of the buffer.
2. We can move to the left margin of the text and are not at the end of the buffer.
3. The text following point does not separate paragraphs.
4. The pattern following point is the fill prefix regular expression.
The last condition may be puzzling, until you remember that point was moved to
the beginning of the line early in the forward-paragraph function. This means that if the
text has a fill prefix, the looking-at function will see it.
Consider what happens when there is no fill prefix.
(while (and (re-search-forward sp-parstart nil 1)
(progn (setq start (match-beginning 0))
(goto-char start)
(not (eobp)))
(progn (move-to-left-margin)
(not (looking-at parsep))) (or (not
(looking-at parstart)) (and use-hard-newlines
(not (get-text-property (1- start) 'hard))))) (forward-char 1))
This while loop has us searching forward for sp-parstart, which is the combination of
possible whitespace with the local value of the start of a paragraph or of a paragraph
separator. (The latter two are within an expression starting \(?: so that they are not
referenced by the match-beginning function.)
The two expressions,
(setq start (match-beginning 0))
(goto-char start) mean go to the start of the text matched by the regular
expression search.
The (match-beginning0) expression is new. It returns a number specifying the
location of the start of the text that was matched by the last search.
Section 12.4: forward-paragraph: a Goldmine of Functions 155

The match-beginning function is used here because of a characteristic of a

forward search: a successful forward search, regardless of whether it is a plain
search or a regular expression search, moves point to the end of the text that is
found. In this case, a successful search moves point to the end of the pattern for sp-
parstart.
However, we want to put point at the end of the current paragraph, not
somewhere else. Indeed, since the search possibly includes the paragraph separator,
point may end up at the beginning of the next one unless we use an expression that
includes match-beginning.
When given an argument of 0, match-beginning returns the position that is the
start of the text matched by the most recent search. In this case, the most recent
search looks for sp-parstart. The (match-beginning0) expression returns the beginning
position of that pattern, rather than the end position of that pattern.
(Incidentally, when passed a positive number as an argument, the match-
beginning function returns the location of point at that parenthesized expression in
the last search unless that parenthesized expression begins with
\(?:. I don’t know why \(?: appears here since the argument is 0.)
 156
Section 12.5: Review

The last expression when there is no fill prefix is

(if (< (point) (point-max))
(goto-char start))))
(Note that this code snippet is copied verbatim from the original code, so the two
extra ending parentheses are matching the previous if and while.)
This says that if there is no fill prefix and if we are not at the end, point should
move to the beginning of whatever was found by the regular expression search for
sp-parstart.
The full definition for the forward-paragraph function not only includes code for
going forwards, but also code for going backwards.
If you are reading this inside of GNU Emacs and you want to see the whole
function, you can type C-hf (describe-function) and the name of the function. This
gives you the function documentation and the name of the library containing the
function’s source. Place point over the name of the library and press the RET key; you
will be taken directly to the source. (Be sure to install your sources! Without them,
you are like a person who tries to drive a car with his eyes shut!)

12.5 Review
Here is a brief summary of some recently introduced functions.
while Repeatedly evaluate the body of the expression so long as the first
element of the body tests true. Then return nil. (The expression is
evaluated only for its side effects.) For example:
(let ((foo 2))
(while (> foo 0)
(insert (format "foo is %d.\n" foo))
(setq foo (1- foo))))

⇒ foo is 2. foo is
1. nil
(The insert function inserts its arguments at point; the format function
returns a string formatted from its arguments the way message
formats its arguments; \n produces a new line.)
re-search-forward
Search for a pattern, and if the pattern is found, move point to rest just
after it.
Takes four arguments, like search-forward:
1. A regular expression that specifies the pattern to search for.
(Remember to put quotation marks around this argument!)
2. Optionally, the limit of the search.
Section 13.1: The count-words-example Function 157
3. Optionally, what to do if the search fails, return nil or an error
message.
4. Optionally, how many times to repeat the search; if negative,
thesearch goes backwards.
let* Bind some variables locally to particular values, and then evaluate the remaining
arguments, returning the value of the last one. While binding the local
variables, use the local values of variables bound earlier, if any.
For example:
(let* ((foo 7)
(bar (* 3 foo))) (message "`bar'
is %d." bar)) ⇒ ‘bar’ is 21.

match-beginning
Return the position of the start of the text found by the last regular
expression search.
looking-at
Return t for true if the text after point matches the argument, which
should be a regular expression.
eobp Return t for true if point is at the end of the accessible part of a buffer. The end
of the accessible part is the end of the buffer if the buffer is not
narrowed; it is the end of the narrowed part if the buffer is narrowed.

12.6 Exercises with re-search-forward

• Write a function to search for a regular expression that matches two or more
blank lines in sequence.
• Write a function to search for duplicated words, such as “the the”. See Section
“Syntax of Regular Expressions” in The GNU Emacs Manual, for information on
how to write a regexp (a regular expression) to match a string that is composed
of two identical halves. You can devise several regexps; some are better than
others. The function I use is described in an appendix, along with several
regexps. See Appendix A “the-the Duplicated Words Function”, page 223.
13 Counting via Repetition and Regexps
Repetition and regular expression searches are powerful tools that you often use
when you write code in Emacs Lisp. This chapter illustrates the use of regular
expression searches through the construction of word count commands using while
loops and recursion.
The standard Emacs distribution contains functions for counting the number of
lines and words within a region.
Certain types of writing ask you to count words. Thus, if you write an essay, you
may be limited to 800 words; if you write a novel, you may discipline yourself to
158 Chapter 12: Regular Expression Searches
write 1000 words a day. It seems odd, but for a long time, Emacs lacked a word
count command. Perhaps people used Emacs mostly for code or types of
documentation that did not require word counts; or perhaps they restricted
themselves to the operating system word count command, wc. Alternatively, people
may have followed the publishers’ convention and computed a word count by
dividing the number of characters in a document by five.
There are many ways to implement a command to count words. Here are some
examples, which you may wish to compare with the standard Emacs command,
count-words-region.

13.1 The count-words-example Function

A word count command could count words in a line, paragraph, region, or buffer.
What should the command cover? You could design the command to count the
number of words in a complete buffer. However, the Emacs tradition encourages
flexibility—you may want to count words in just a section, rather than all of a buffer.
So it makes more sense to design the command to count the number of words in a
region. Once you have a command to count words in a region, you can, if you wish,
count words in a whole buffer by marking it with C-xh (mark-whole-buffer).
Clearly, counting words is a repetitive act: starting from the beginning of the
region, you count the first word, then the second word, then the third word, and so
on, until you reach the end of the region. This means that word counting is ideally
suited to recursion or to a while loop.
First, we will implement the word count command with a while loop, then with
recursion. The command will, of course, be interactive.
The template for an interactive function definition is, as always:
(defun name-of-function (argument-list)
"documentation..." (interactive-expression...)
body...)
What we need to do is fill in the slots.
The name of the function should be self-explanatory and easy to remember.
count-words-region is the obvious choice. Since that name is used for the standard
Emacs command to count words, we will name our implementation count-words-
example.
Section 13.1: The count-words-example Function 159

The function counts words within a region. This means that the argument list
must contain symbols that are bound to the two positions, the beginning and end of
the region. These two positions can be called ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ respectively. The
first line of the documentation should be a single sentence, since that is all that is
printed as documentation by a command such as apropos. The interactive expression
will be of the form ‘(interactive"r")’, since that will cause Emacs to pass the beginning
and end of the region to the function’s argument list. All this is routine.
The body of the function needs to be written to do three tasks: first, to set up
conditions under which the while loop can count words, second, to run the while
loop, and third, to send a message to the user.
When a user calls count-words-example, point may be at the beginning or the end
of the region. However, the counting process must start at the beginning of the
region. This means we will want to put point there if it is not already there.
Executing (goto-charbeginning) ensures this. Of course, we will want to return point
to its expected position when the function finishes its work. For this reason, the body
must be enclosed in a save-excursion expression.
The central part of the body of the function consists of a while loop in which one
expression jumps point forward word by word, and another expression counts those
jumps. The true-or-false-test of the while loop should test true so long as point
should jump forward, and false when point is at the end of the region.
We could use (forward-word1) as the expression for moving point forward word
by word, but it is easier to see what Emacs identifies as a “word” if we use a regular
expression search.
A regular expression search that finds the pattern for which it is searching leaves
point after the last character matched. This means that a succession of successful
word searches will move point forward word by word.
As a practical matter, we want the regular expression search to jump over
whitespace and punctuation between words as well as over the words themselves. A
regexp that refuses to jump over interword whitespace would never jump more than
one word! This means that the regexp should include the whitespace and
punctuation that follows a word, if any, as well as the word itself. (A word may end a
buffer and not have any following whitespace or punctuation, so that part of the
regexp must be optional.)
Thus, what we want for the regexp is a pattern defining one or more word
constituent characters followed, optionally, by one or more characters that are not
word constituents. The regular expression for this is:
\w+\W*
The buffer’s syntax table determines which characters are and are not word
constituents. For more information about syntax, see Section “Syntax Tables” in The
GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The search expression looks like this:
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*")
160 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

(Note that paired backslashes precede the ‘w’ and ‘W’. A single backslash has special
meaning to the Emacs Lisp interpreter. It indicates that the following character is
interpreted differently than usual. For example, the two characters, ‘\n’, stand for
‘newline’, rather than for a backslash followed by ‘n’. Two backslashes in a row stand
for an ordinary, unspecial backslash, so Emacs Lisp interpreter ends of seeing a
single backslash followed by a letter. So it discovers the letter is special.)
We need a counter to count how many words there are; this variable must first
be set to 0 and then incremented each time Emacs goes around the while loop. The
incrementing expression is simply:
(setq count (1+ count))
Finally, we want to tell the user how many words there are in the region. The
message function is intended for presenting this kind of information to the user. The
message has to be phrased so that it reads properly regardless of how many words
there are in the region: we don’t want to say that “there are 1 words in the region”.
The conflict between singular and plural is ungrammatical. We can solve this
problem by using a conditional expression that evaluates different messages
depending on the number of words in the region. There are three possibilities: no
words in the region, one word in the region, and more than one word. This means
that the cond special form is appropriate.
Section 13.1: The count-words-example Function 161

All this leads to the following function definition:

;;; First version; has bugs!
(defun count-words-example (beginning end) "Print number of
words in the region. Words are defined as at least one word-
constituent character followed by at least one character that is
not a word-constituent. The buffer's syntax table determines
which characters these are."
(interactive "r")
(message "Counting words in region ... ")

;;; 1. Set up appropriate conditions.

(save-excursion
(goto-char beginning)
(let ((count 0))

;;; 2. Run the while loop.

(while (< (point) end)
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*")
(setq count (1+ count)))

;;; 3. Send a message to the user.

(cond ((zerop count)
(message
"The region does NOT have any words."))
((= 1 count)
(message
"The region has 1 word."))
(t
(message
"The region has %d words." count)))))) As written,
the function works, but not in all circumstances.

13.1.1 The Whitespace Bug in count-words-example

The count-words-example command described in the preceding section has two bugs,
or rather, one bug with two manifestations. First, if you mark a region containing
only whitespace in the middle of some text, the count-words-example command tells
you that the region contains one word! Second, if you mark a region containing only
whitespace at the end of the buffer or the accessible portion of a narrowed buffer,
the command displays an error message that looks like this:
Search failed: "\\w+\\W*"
If you are reading this in Info in GNU Emacs, you can test for these bugs yourself.
First, evaluate the function in the usual manner to install it.
If you wish, you can also install this key binding by evaluating it:
162 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

(global-set-key "\C-c=" 'count-words-example)

To conduct the first test, set mark and point to the beginning and end of the
following line and then type C-c= (or M-xcount-words-example if you have not bound
C-c=):
one two three
Emacs will tell you, correctly, that the region has three words.
Repeat the test, but place mark at the beginning of the line and place point just
before the word ‘one’. Again type the command C-c= (or M-xcount-wordsexample).
Emacs should tell you that the region has no words, since it is composed only of the
whitespace at the beginning of the line. But instead Emacs tells you that the region
has one word!
For the third test, copy the sample line to the end of the *scratch* buffer and then
type several spaces at the end of the line. Place mark right after the word ‘three’ and
point at the end of line. (The end of the line will be the end of the buffer.) Type C-c=
(or M-xcount-words-example) as you did before. Again, Emacs should tell you that the
region has no words, since it is composed only of the whitespace at the end of the
line. Instead, Emacs displays an error message saying ‘Searchfailed’.
The two bugs stem from the same problem.
Consider the first manifestation of the bug, in which the command tells you that
the whitespace at the beginning of the line contains one word. What happens is this:
The M-xcount-words-example command moves point to the beginning of the region.
The while tests whether the value of point is smaller than the value of end, which it
is. Consequently, the regular expression search looks for and finds the first word. It
leaves point after the word. count is set to one. The while loop repeats; but this time
the value of point is larger than the value of end, the loop is exited; and the function
displays a message saying the number of words in the region is one. In brief, the
regular expression search looks for and finds the word even though it is outside the
marked region.
In the second manifestation of the bug, the region is whitespace at the end of the
buffer. Emacs says ‘Searchfailed’. What happens is that the true-or-false-test in the
while loop tests true, so the search expression is executed. But since there are no
more words in the buffer, the search fails.
In both manifestations of the bug, the search extends or attempts to extend
outside of the region.
The solution is to limit the search to the region—this is a fairly simple action, but
as you may have come to expect, it is not quite as simple as you might think.
As we have seen, the re-search-forward function takes a search pattern as its first
argument. But in addition to this first, mandatory argument, it accepts three
optional arguments. The optional second argument bounds the search. The optional
third argument, if t, causes the function to return nil rather than signal an error if the
search fails. The optional fourth argument is a repeat count. (In Emacs, you can see a
function’s documentation by typing C-hf, the name of the function, and then RET.)
Section 13.1: The count-words-example Function 163

In the count-words-example definition, the value of the end of the region is held by
the variable end which is passed as an argument to the function. Thus, we can add
end as an argument to the regular expression search expression:
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" end)
However, if you make only this change to the count-words-example definition and
then test the new version of the definition on a stretch of whitespace, you will
receive an error message saying ‘Searchfailed’.
What happens is this: the search is limited to the region, and fails as you expect
because there are no word-constituent characters in the region. Since it fails, we
receive an error message. But we do not want to receive an error message in this
case; we want to receive the message “The region does NOT have any words.”
The solution to this problem is to provide re-search-forward with a third
argument of t, which causes the function to return nil rather than signal an error if
the search fails.
However, if you make this change and try it, you will see the message “Counting
words in region ... ” and . . . you will keep on seeing that message . . ., until you type C-
g (keyboard-quit).
Here is what happens: the search is limited to the region, as before, and it fails
because there are no word-constituent characters in the region, as expected.
Consequently, the re-search-forward expression returns nil. It does nothing else. In
particular, it does not move point, which it does as a side effect if it finds the search
target. After the re-search-forward expression returns nil, the next expression in the
while loop is evaluated. This expression increments the count. Then the loop repeats.
The true-or-false-test tests true because the value of point is still less than the value
of end, since the re-search-forward expression did not move point. . . . and the cycle
repeats . . .
The count-words-example definition requires yet another modification, to cause
the true-or-false-test of the while loop to test false if the search fails. Put another
way, there are two conditions that must be satisfied in the true-or-false-test before
the word count variable is incremented: point must still be within the region and the
search expression must have found a word to count.
Since both the first condition and the second condition must be true together, the
two expressions, the region test and the search expression, can be joined with an and
special form and embedded in the while loop as the true-or-false-test, like this:
(and (< (point) end) (re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" end t))
(For information about and, see “The kill-new function”, page 97.)
The re-search-forward expression returns t if the search succeeds and as a side
effect moves point. Consequently, as words are found, point is moved through the
region. When the search expression fails to find another word, or when point
reaches the end of the region, the true-or-false-test tests false, the while loop exits,
and the count-words-example function displays one or other of its messages.
164 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

After incorporating these final changes, the count-words-example works without

bugs (or at least, without bugs that I have found!). Here is what it looks like:
Section 13.2: Count Words Recursively 165

;;; Final version: while

(defun count-words-example (beginning end)
"Print number of words in the region."
(interactive "r")
(message "Counting words in region ... ")

;;; 1. Set up appropriate conditions.

(save-excursion
(let ((count 0)) (goto-char
beginning)

;;; 2. Run the while loop.

(while (and (< (point) end)
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" end t))
(setq count (1+ count)))

;;; 3. Send a message to the user.

(cond ((zerop count)
(message
"The region does NOT have any words."))
((= 1 count)
(message
"The region has 1 word."))
(t
(message
"The region has %d words." count))))))

13.2 Count Words Recursively

You can write the function for counting words recursively as well as with a while
loop. Let’s see how this is done.
First, we need to recognize that the count-words-example function has three jobs:
it sets up the appropriate conditions for counting to occur; it counts the words in the
region; and it sends a message to the user telling how many words there are.
If we write a single recursive function to do everything, we will receive a message
for every recursive call. If the region contains 13 words, we will receive thirteen
messages, one right after the other. We don’t want this! Instead, we must write two
functions to do the job, one of which (the recursive function) will be used inside of
the other. One function will set up the conditions and display the message; the other
will return the word count.
Let us start with the function that causes the message to be displayed. We can
continue to call this count-words-example.
166 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

This is the function that the user will call. It will be interactive. Indeed, it will be
similar to our previous versions of this function, except that it will call recursive-
count-words to determine how many words are in the region.
We can readily construct a template for this function, based on our previous
versions:
;; Recursive version; uses regular expression search
(defun count-words-example (beginning end)
"documentation..."
(interactive-expression...)

;;; 1. Set up appropriate conditions.

(explanatory message) (set-up
functions...

;;; 2. Count the words. recursive call

;;; 3. Send a message to the user. message

providing word count))
The definition looks straightforward, except that somehow the count returned by
the recursive call must be passed to the message displaying the word count. A little
thought suggests that this can be done by making use of a let expression: we can
bind a variable in the varlist of a let expression to the number of words in the region,
as returned by the recursive call; and then the cond expression, using binding, can
display the value to the user.
Often, one thinks of the binding within a let expression as somehow secondary to
the primary work of a function. But in this case, what you might consider the
primary job of the function, counting words, is done within the let expression.
Using let, the function definition looks like this:
(defun count-words-example (beginning end)
"Print number of words in the region."
(interactive "r")

;;; 1. Set up appropriate conditions.

(message "Counting words in region ... ")
(save-excursion (goto-char
beginning)

;;; 2. Count the words.

(let ((count (recursive-count-words end)))

;;; 3. Send a message to the user.

(cond ((zerop count)
(message
"The region does NOT have any words."))
Section 13.2: Count Words Recursively 167

((= 1 count)
(message
"The region has 1 word."))
(t
(message
"The region has %d words." count)))))) Next, we need
to write the recursive counting function.
A recursive function has at least three parts: the do-again-test, the next-
stepexpression, and the recursive call.
The do-again-test determines whether the function will or will not be called
again. Since we are counting words in a region and can use a function that moves
point forward for every word, the do-again-test can check whether point is still
within the region. The do-again-test should find the value of point and determine
whether point is before, at, or after the value of the end of the region. We can use the
point function to locate point. Clearly, we must pass the value of the end of the region
to the recursive counting function as an argument.
In addition, the do-again-test should also test whether the search finds a word. If
it does not, the function should not call itself again.
The next-step-expression changes a value so that when the recursive function is
supposed to stop calling itself, it stops. More precisely, the next-step-expression
changes a value so that at the right time, the do-again-test stops the recursive
function from calling itself again. In this case, the next-step-expression can be the
expression that moves point forward, word by word.
The third part of a recursive function is the recursive call.
Somewhere, we also need a part that does the work of the function, a part that
does the counting. A vital part!
But already, we have an outline of the recursive counting function:
(defun recursive-count-words (region-end)
"documentation..." do-again-test next-
step-expression recursive call)
Now we need to fill in the slots. Let’s start with the simplest cases first: if point is
at or beyond the end of the region, there cannot be any words in the region, so the
function should return zero. Likewise, if the search fails, there are no words to count,
so the function should return zero.
On the other hand, if point is within the region and the search succeeds, the
function should call itself again.
Thus, the do-again-test should look like this:
(and (< (point) region-end)
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" region-end t))
Note that the search expression is part of the do-again-test—the function returns
t if its search succeeds and nil if it fails. (See Section 13.1.1 “The Whitespace Bug in
count-words-example”, page 158, for an explanation of how re-searchforward works.)
168 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

The do-again-test is the true-or-false test of an if clause. Clearly, if the doagain-

test succeeds, the then-part of the if clause should call the function again; but if it
fails, the else-part should return zero since either point is outside the region or the
search failed because there were no words to find.
But before considering the recursive call, we need to consider the next-
stepexpression. What is it? Interestingly, it is the search part of the do-again-test.
In addition to returning t or nil for the do-again-test, re-search-forward moves
point forward as a side effect of a successful search. This is the action that changes
the value of point so that the recursive function stops calling itself when point
completes its movement through the region. Consequently, the re-searchforward
expression is the next-step-expression.
In outline, then, the body of the recursive-count-words function looks like this:
(if do-again-test-and-next-step-combined
;; then recursive-call-returning-count
;; else return-zero)
How to incorporate the mechanism that counts?
If you are not used to writing recursive functions, a question like this can be
troublesome. But it can and should be approached systematically.
We know that the counting mechanism should be associated in some way with
the recursive call. Indeed, since the next-step-expression moves point forward by
one word, and since a recursive call is made for each word, the counting mechanism
must be an expression that adds one to the value returned by a call to recursive-
countwords.
Consider several cases:
• If there are two words in the region, the function should return a value
resulting from adding one to the value returned when it counts the first word,
plus the number returned when it counts the remaining words in the region,
which in this case is one.
• If there is one word in the region, the function should return a value resulting
from adding one to the value returned when it counts that word, plus the
number returned when it counts the remaining words in the region, which in
this case is zero.
• If there are no words in the region, the function should return zero.
From the sketch we can see that the else-part of the if returns zero for the case of
no words. This means that the then-part of the if must return a value resulting from
adding one to the value returned from a count of the remaining words.
The expression will look like this, where 1+ is a function that adds one to its
argument.
(1+ (recursive-count-words region-end))
The whole recursive-count-words function will then look like this:
Section 13.2: Count Words Recursively 169

(defun recursive-count-words (region-end)

"documentation..."

;;; 1. do-again-test
(if (and (< (point) region-end)
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" region-end t))

;;; 2. then-part: the recursive call

(1+ (recursive-count-words region-end))

;;; 3. else-part
0))
Let’s examine how this works:
If there are no words in the region, the else part of the if expression is evaluated
and consequently the function returns zero.
If there is one word in the region, the value of point is less than the value of
region-end and the search succeeds. In this case, the true-or-false-test of the if
expression tests true, and the then-part of the if expression is evaluated. The
counting expression is evaluated. This expression returns a value (which will be the
value returned by the whole function) that is the sum of one added to the value
returned by a recursive call.
Meanwhile, the next-step-expression has caused point to jump over the first (and
in this case only) word in the region. This means that when (recursive-
countwordsregion-end) is evaluated a second time, as a result of the recursive call, the
value of point will be equal to or greater than the value of region end. So this time,
recursive-count-words will return zero. The zero will be added to one, and the original
evaluation of recursive-count-words will return one plus zero, which is one, which is
the correct amount.
Clearly, if there are two words in the region, the first call to recursive-countwords
returns one added to the value returned by calling recursive-count-words on a region
containing the remaining word—that is, it adds one to one, producing two, which is
the correct amount.
Similarly, if there are three words in the region, the first call to recursive-count-
words returns one added to the value returned by calling recursive-count-words on a
region containing the remaining two words—and so on and so on.
With full documentation the two functions look like this: The
recursive function:
(defun recursive-count-words (region-end)
"Number of words between point and REGION-END."

;;; 1. do-again-test
(if (and (< (point) region-end)
(re-search-forward "\\w+\\W*" region-end t))
170 Chapter 13: Counting via Repetition and Regexps

;;; 2. then-part: the recursive call

(1+ (recursive-count-words region-end))

;;; 3. else-part
0)) The
wrapper:
;;; Recursive version
(defun count-words-example (beginning end) "Print number
of words in the region.

Words are defined as at least one word-constituent character followed

by at least one character that is not a word-constituent. The buffer's
syntax table determines which characters these are."
(interactive "r")
(message "Counting words in region ... ")
(save-excursion
(goto-char beginning)
(let ((count (recursive-count-words end))) (cond ((zerop
count)
(message
"The region does NOT have any words."))
((= 1 count)
(message "The region has 1 word."))
(t
(message
"The region has %d words." count))))))

13.3 Exercise: Counting Punctuation

Using a while loop, write a function to count the number of punctuation marks in a
region—period, comma, semicolon, colon, exclamation mark, and question mark. Do
the same using recursion.
 171
Section 14.1: What to Count?

14 Counting Words in a defun

Our next project is to count the number of words in a function definition. Clearly, this
can be done using some variant of count-words-example. See Chapter 13 “Counting
via Repetition and Regexps”, page 155. If we are just going to count the words in one
definition, it is easy enough to mark the definition with the C-M-h (mark-defun)
command, and then call count-words-example.
However, I am more ambitious: I want to count the words and symbols in every
definition in the Emacs sources and then print a graph that shows how many
functions there are of each length: how many contain 40 to 49 words or symbols,
how many contain 50 to 59 words or symbols, and so on. I have often been curious
how long a typical function is, and this will tell.
Described in one phrase, the histogram project is daunting; but divided into
numerous small steps, each of which we can take one at a time, the project becomes
less fearsome. Let us consider what the steps must be:
• First, write a function to count the words in one definition. This includes the
problem of handling symbols as well as words.
• Second, write a function to list the number of words in each function in a file. This
function can use the count-words-in-defun function.
• Third, write a function to list the number of words in each function in each of
several files. This entails automatically finding the various files, switching to
them, and counting the words in the definitions within them.
• Fourth, write a function to convert the list of numbers that we created in step
three to a form that will be suitable for printing as a graph.
• Fifth, write a function to print the results as a graph.
This is quite a project! But if we take each step slowly, it will not be difficult.

14.1 What to Count?

When we first start thinking about how to count the words in a function definition,
the first question is (or ought to be) what are we going to count? When we speak of
“words” with respect to a Lisp function definition, we are actually speaking, in large
part, of symbols. For example, the following multiply-by-seven function contains the
five symbols defun, multiply-by-seven, number, *, and 7. In addition, in the
documentation string, it contains the four words ‘Multiply’, ‘NUMBER’, ‘by’, and ‘seven’.
The symbol ‘number’ is repeated, so the definition contains a total of ten words and
symbols.
(defun multiply-by-seven (number)
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(* 7 number))
172 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
However, if we mark the multiply-by-seven definition with C-M-h (mark-defun), and
then call count-words-example on it, we will find that count-words-example claims the
definition has eleven words, not ten! Something is wrong!
The problem is twofold: count-words-example does not count the ‘*’ as a word, and
it counts the single symbol, multiply-by-seven, as containing three words.
The hyphens are treated as if they were interword spaces rather than intraword
connectors: ‘multiply-by-seven’ is counted as if it were written ‘multiplyby seven’.
The cause of this confusion is the regular expression search within the count-
words-example definition that moves point forward word by word. In the canonical
version of count-words-example, the regexp is:
"\\w+\\W*"
This regular expression is a pattern defining one or more word constituent
characters possibly followed by one or more characters that are not word
constituents. What is meant by “word constituent characters” brings us to the issue
of syntax, which is worth a section of its own.

14.2 What Constitutes a Word or Symbol?

Emacs treats different characters as belonging to different syntax categories. For
example, the regular expression, ‘\\w+’, is a pattern specifying one or more word
constituent characters. Word constituent characters are members of one syntax
category. Other syntax categories include the class of punctuation characters, such as
the period and the comma, and the class of whitespace characters, such as the blank
space and the tab character. (For more information, see Section “Syntax Tables” in
The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)
Syntax tables specify which characters belong to which categories. Usually, a
hyphen is not specified as a word constituent character. Instead, it is specified as
being in the class of characters that are part of symbol names but not words. This
means that the count-words-example function treats it in the same way it treats an
interword white space, which is why count-words-example counts ‘multiply-by-seven’
as three words.
There are two ways to cause Emacs to count ‘multiply-by-seven’ as one symbol:
modify the syntax table or modify the regular expression.
We could redefine a hyphen as a word constituent character by modifying the
syntax table that Emacs keeps for each mode. This action would serve our purpose,
except that a hyphen is merely the most common character within symbols that is
not typically a word constituent character; there are others, too.
Alternatively, we can redefine the regexp used in the count-words-example
definition so as to include symbols. This procedure has the merit of clarity, but the
task is a little tricky.
Section 14.3: The count-words-in-defun Function
 173
The first part is simple enough: the pattern must match at least one character that
is a word or symbol constituent. Thus:
"\\(\\w\\|\\s_\\)+"
The ‘\\(’ is the first part of the grouping construct that includes the ‘\\w’ and the ‘\\
s_’ as alternatives, separated by the ‘\\|’. The ‘\\w’ matches any wordconstituent
character and the ‘\\s_’ matches any character that is part of a symbol name but not
a word-constituent character. The ‘+’ following the group indicates that the word or
symbol constituent characters must be matched at least once.
However, the second part of the regexp is more difficult to design. What we want
is to follow the first part with optionally one or more characters that are not
constituents of a word or symbol. At first, I thought I could define this with the
following:
"\\(\\W\\|\\S_\\)*"
The upper case ‘W’ and ‘S’ match characters that are not word or symbol
constituents. Unfortunately, this expression matches any character that is either not
a word constituent or not a symbol constituent. This matches any character!
I then noticed that every word or symbol in my test region was followed by white
space (blank space, tab, or newline). So I tried placing a pattern to match one or
more blank spaces after the pattern for one or more word or symbol constituents.
This failed, too. Words and symbols are often separated by whitespace, but in actual
code parentheses may follow symbols and punctuation may follow words. So finally,
I designed a pattern in which the word or symbol constituents are followed
optionally by characters that are not white space and then followed optionally by
white space.
Here is the full regular expression:
"\\(\\w\\|\\s_\\)+[^ \t\n]*[ \t\n]*"

14.3 The count-words-in-defun Function

We have seen that there are several ways to write a count-words-region function. To
write a count-words-in-defun, we need merely adapt one of these versions.
The version that uses a while loop is easy to understand, so I am going to adapt
that. Because count-words-in-defun will be part of a more complex program, it need
not be interactive and it need not display a message but just return the count. These
considerations simplify the definition a little.
On the other hand, count-words-in-defun will be used within a buffer that contains
function definitions. Consequently, it is reasonable to ask that the function
determine whether it is called when point is within a function definition, and if it is,
to return the count for that definition. This adds complexity to the definition, but
saves us from needing to pass arguments to the function.
These considerations lead us to prepare the following template:
(defun count-words-in-defun ()
"documentation..." (set up...
174 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
(while loop...) return
count)
As usual, our job is to fill in the slots.
First, the set up.
We are presuming that this function will be called within a buffer containing
function definitions. Point will either be within a function definition or not. For
count-words-in-defun to work, point must move to the beginning of the definition, a
counter must start at zero, and the counting loop must stop when point reaches the
end of the definition.
The beginning-of-defun function searches backwards for an opening delimiter
such as a ‘(’ at the beginning of a line, and moves point to that position, or else to the
limit of the search. In practice, this means that beginning-of-defun moves point to the
beginning of an enclosing or preceding function definition, or else to the beginning
of the buffer. We can use beginning-of-defun to place point where we wish to start.
The while loop requires a counter to keep track of the words or symbols being
counted. A let expression can be used to create a local variable for this purpose, and
bind it to an initial value of zero.
The end-of-defun function works like beginning-of-defun except that it moves
point to the end of the definition. end-of-defun can be used as part of an expression
that determines the position of the end of the definition.
The set up for count-words-in-defun takes shape rapidly: first we move point to
the beginning of the definition, then we create a local variable to hold the count, and
finally, we record the position of the end of the definition so the while loop will know
when to stop looping.
Section 14.3: The count-words-in-defun Function

The code looks like this:

(beginning-of-defun) (let
((count 0)
(end (save-excursion (end-of-defun) (point))))
The code is simple. The only slight complication is likely to concern end: it is bound
to the position of the end of the definition by a save-excursion expression that returns
the value of point after end-of-defun temporarily moves it to the end of the definition.
The second part of the count-words-in-defun, after the set up, is the while loop.
The loop must contain an expression that jumps point forward word by word and
symbol by symbol, and another expression that counts the jumps. The true-orfalse-
test for the while loop should test true so long as point should jump forward, and
false when point is at the end of the definition. We have already redefined the
regular expression for this, so the loop is straightforward:
(while (and (< (point) end)
(re-search-forward
"\\(\\w\\|\\s_\\)+[^ \t\n]*[ \t\n]*" end t))
(setq count (1+ count)))
 175
The third part of the function definition returns the count of words and symbols.
This part is the last expression within the body of the let expression, and can be, very
simply, the local variable count, which when evaluated returns the count.
Put together, the count-words-in-defun definition looks like this:
(defun count-words-in-defun ()
"Return the number of words and symbols in a defun."
(beginning-of-defun) (let
((count 0)
(end (save-excursion (end-of-defun) (point)))) (while
(and (< (point) end)
(re-search-forward
"\\(\\w\\|\\s_\\)+[^ \t\n]*[ \t\n]*" end t))
(setq count (1+ count))) count))
How to test this? The function is not interactive, but it is easy to put a wrapper
around the function to make it interactive; we can use almost the same code as for
the recursive version of count-words-example:
;;; Interactive version.
(defun count-words-defun ()
"Number of words and symbols in a function definition."
(interactive)
(message
"Counting words and symbols in function definition ... ")
(let ((count (count-words-in-defun)))
(cond
((zerop count)
(message
"The definition does NOT have any words or symbols."))
((= 1 count)
(message
"The definition has 1 word or symbol."))
(t
(message
"The definition has %d words or symbols." count))))) Let’s reuse C-c=
as a convenient key binding:
(global-set-key "\C-c=" 'count-words-defun)
Now we can try out count-words-defun: install both count-words-in-defun and
count-words-defun, and set the key binding. Then copy the following to an Emacs Lisp
buffer (like, for instance, *scratch*), place the cursor within the definition, and use
the C-c= command.
(defun multiply-by-seven (number)
"Multiply NUMBER by seven."
(* 7 number))
⇒ 10
Success! The definition has 10 words and symbols.
176 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
The next problem is to count the numbers of words and symbols in several
definitions within a single file.

14.4 Count Several defuns Within a File

A file such as simple.el may have a hundred or more function definitions within it.
Our long term goal is to collect statistics on many files, but as a first step, our
immediate goal is to collect statistics on one file.
The information will be a series of numbers, each number being the length of a
function definition. We can store the numbers in a list.
We know that we will want to incorporate the information regarding one file
with information about many other files; this means that the function for counting
definition lengths within one file need only return the list of lengths. It need not and
should not display any messages.
The word count commands contain one expression to jump point forward word
by word and another expression to count the jumps. The function to return the
lengths of definitions can be designed to work the same way, with one expression to
jump point forward definition by definition and another expression to construct the
lengths’ list.
This statement of the problem makes it elementary to write the function
definition. Clearly, we will start the count at the beginning of the file, so the first
command will be (goto-char(point-min)). Next, we start the while loop; and the true-
or-false test of the loop can be a regular expression search for the next function
definition—so long as the search succeeds, point is moved forward and then the
body of the loop is evaluated. The body needs an expression that constructs the
lengths’ list. cons, the list construction command, can be used to create the list. That
is almost all there is to it.
Section 14.5: Find a File

Here is what this fragment of code looks like:

(goto-char (point-min))
(while (re-search-forward "^(defun" nil t) (setq lengths-list
(cons (count-words-in-defun) lengths-list)))
What we have left out is the mechanism for finding the file that contains the
function definitions.
In previous examples, we either used this, the Info file, or we switched back and
forth to some other buffer, such as the *scratch* buffer.
Finding a file is a new process that we have not yet discussed.

14.5 Find a File

To find a file in Emacs, you use the C-xC-f (find-file) command. This command is almost,
but not quite right for the lengths problem.
Let’s look at the source for find-file:
 177
(defun find-file (filename) "Edit file
FILENAME.
Switch to a buffer visiting file FILENAME, creating one if none
already exists."
(interactive "FFind file: ")
(switch-to-buffer (find-file-noselect filename)))
(The most recent version of the find-file function definition permits you to specify
optional wildcards to visit multiple files; that makes the definition more complex
and we will not discuss it here, since it is not relevant. You can see its source using
either M-. (xref-find-definitions) or C-hf (describe-function).)
The definition I am showing possesses short but complete documentation and an
interactive specification that prompts you for a file name when you use the
command interactively. The body of the definition contains two functions, find-
filenoselect and switch-to-buffer.
According to its documentation as shown by C-hf (the describe-function
command), the find-file-noselect function reads the named file into a buffer and
returns the buffer. (Its most recent version includes an optional wildcards argument,
too, as well as another to read a file literally and another to suppress warning
messages. These optional arguments are irrelevant.)
However, the find-file-noselect function does not select the buffer in which it puts
the file. Emacs does not switch its attention (or yours if you are using find-file-
noselect) to the selected buffer. That is what switch-to-buffer does: it switches the
buffer to which Emacs attention is directed; and it switches the buffer displayed in
the window to the new buffer. We have discussed buffer switching elsewhere. (See
Section 2.3 “Switching Buffers”, page 23.)
In this histogram project, we do not need to display each file on the screen as the
program determines the length of each definition within it. Instead of employing
switch-to-buffer, we can work with set-buffer, which redirects the attention of the
computer program to a different buffer but does not redisplay it on the screen. So
instead of calling on find-file to do the job, we must write our own expression.
The task is easy: use find-file-noselect and set-buffer.

14.6 lengths-list-file in Detail

The core of the lengths-list-file function is a while loop containing a function to move
point forward defun by defun, and a function to count the number of words and
symbols in each defun. This core must be surrounded by functions that do various
other tasks, including finding the file, and ensuring that point starts out at the
beginning of the file. The function definition looks like this:
(defun lengths-list-file (filename)
"Return list of definitions' lengths within FILE. The returned list
is a list of numbers. Each number is the number of words or
symbols in one function definition."
(message "Working on `%s' ... " filename)
178 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
(save-excursion
(let ((buffer (find-file-noselect filename))
(lengths-list))
(set-buffer buffer)
(setq buffer-read-only t)
(widen)
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (re-search-forward "^(defun" nil t) (setq lengths-list
(cons (count-words-in-defun) lengths-list)))
(kill-buffer buffer) lengths-list)))
The function is passed one argument, the name of the file on which it will work. It
has four lines of documentation, but no interactive specification. Since people worry
that a computer is broken if they don’t see anything going on, the first line of the
body is a message.
The next line contains a save-excursion that returns Emacs’s attention to the
current buffer when the function completes. This is useful in case you embed this
function in another function that presumes point is restored to the original buffer.
In the varlist of the let expression, Emacs finds the file and binds the local
variable buffer to the buffer containing the file. At the same time, Emacs creates
lengths-list as a local variable.
Next, Emacs switches its attention to the buffer.
In the following line, Emacs makes the buffer read-only. Ideally, this line is not
necessary. None of the functions for counting words and symbols in a function
definition should change the buffer. Besides, the buffer is not going to be saved, even
if it were changed. This line is entirely the consequence of great, perhaps excessive,
caution. The reason for the caution is that this function and those it calls work on the
sources for Emacs and it is inconvenient if they are inadvertently modified. It goes
without saying that I did not realize a need for this line until an experiment went
awry and started to modify my Emacs source files . . .
Next comes a call to widen the buffer if it is narrowed. This function is usually not
needed—Emacs creates a fresh buffer if none already exists; but if a buffer Section
14.7: Count Words in defuns in Different Files

visiting the file already exists Emacs returns that one. In this case, the buffer may be
narrowed and must be widened. If we wanted to be fully user-friendly, we would
arrange to save the restriction and the location of point, but we won’t.
The (goto-char(point-min)) expression moves point to the beginning of the buffer.
Then comes a while loop in which the work of the function is carried out. In the
loop, Emacs determines the length of each definition and constructs a lengths’ list
containing the information.
Emacs kills the buffer after working through it. This is to save space inside of
Emacs. My version of GNU Emacs 19 contained over 300 source files of interest; GNU
Emacs 22 contains over a thousand source files. Another function will apply lengths-
list-file to each of the files.
 179
Finally, the last expression within the let expression is the lengths-list variable; its
value is returned as the value of the whole function.
You can try this function by installing it in the usual fashion. Then place your cursor
after the following expression and type C-xC-e (eval-last-sexp).
(lengths-list-file
"/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/emacs-lisp/debug.el")
You may need to change the pathname of the file; the one here is for GNU Emacs
version 22.1. To change the expression, copy it to the *scratch* buffer and edit it.
Also, to see the full length of the list, rather than a truncated version, you may have to
evaluate the following:
(custom-set-variables '(eval-expression-print-length nil))
(See Section 16.2 “Specifying Variables using defcustom”, page 197. Then evaluate the
lengths-list-file expression.)
The lengths’ list for debug.el takes less than a second to produce and looks like this
in GNU Emacs 22:
(83 113 105 144 289 22 30 97 48 89 25 52 52 88 28 29 77 49 43 290 232 587)
(Using my old machine, the version 19 lengths’ list for debug.el took seven seconds
to produce and looked like this:
(75 41 80 62 20 45 44 68 45 12 34 235)
The newer version of debug.el contains more defuns than the earlier one; and my new
machine is much faster than the old one.)
Note that the length of the last definition in the file is first in the list.

14.7 Count Words in defuns in Different Files

In the previous section, we created a function that returns a list of the lengths of
each definition in a file. Now, we want to define a function to return a master list of
the lengths of the definitions in a list of files.
Working on each of a list of files is a repetitious act, so we can use either a while
loop or recursion.
The design using a while loop is routine. The argument passed to the function is a
list of files. As we saw earlier (see Section 11.1.1 “Loop Example”, page 116), you can
write a while loop so that the body of the loop is evaluated if such a list contains
elements, but to exit the loop if the list is empty. For this design to work, the body of
the loop must contain an expression that shortens the list each time the body is
evaluated, so that eventually the list is empty. The usual technique is to set the value
of the list to the value of the cdr of the list each time the body is evaluated.
The template looks like this:
(while test-whether-list-is-empty body...
set-list-to-cdr-of-list)
Also, we remember that a while loop returns nil (the result of evaluating the true-
or-false-test), not the result of any evaluation within its body. (The evaluations
within the body of the loop are done for their side effects.) However, the expression
180 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
that sets the lengths’ list is part of the body—and that is the value that we want
returned by the function as a whole. To do this, we enclose the while loop within a let
expression, and arrange that the last element of the let expression contains the value
of the lengths’ list. (See “Loop Example with an Incrementing Counter”, page 118.)
These considerations lead us directly to the function itself:
;;; Use while loop.
(defun lengths-list-many-files (list-of-files)
"Return list of lengths of defuns in LIST-OF-FILES."
(let (lengths-list)

;;; true-or-false-test
(while list-of-files
(setq lengths-list
(append lengths-list

;;; Generate a lengths’ list.

(lengths-list-file
(expand-file-name (car list-of-files)))))

;;; Make files’ list shorter.

(setq list-of-files (cdr list-of-files)))

;;; Return final value of lengths’ list.

lengths-list))
expand-file-name is a built-in function that converts a file name to the absolute,
long, path name form. The function employs the name of the directory in which the
function is called.
Section 14.8: Recursively Count Words in Different Files

Thus, if expand-file-name is called on debug.el when Emacs is visiting the

/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/emacs-lisp/ directory, debug.el
becomes
/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/emacs-lisp/debug.el
The only other new element of this function definition is the as yet unstudied
function append, which merits a short section for itself.

14.7.1 The append Function

The append function attaches one list to another. Thus,
(append '(1 2 3 4) '(5 6 7 8)) produces the list
(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)
This is exactly how we want to attach two lengths’ lists produced by lengths-list-file
to each other. The results contrast with cons,
(cons '(1 2 3 4) '(5 6 7 8))
 181
which constructs a new list in which the first argument to cons becomes the first
element of the new list:
((1 2 3 4) 5 6 7 8)

14.8 Recursively Count Words in Different Files

Besides a while loop, you can work on each of a list of files with recursion. A recursive
version of lengths-list-many-files is short and simple.
The recursive function has the usual parts: the do-again-test, the next-
stepexpression, and the recursive call. The do-again-test determines whether the
function should call itself again, which it will do if the list-of-files contains any
remaining elements; the next-step-expression resets the list-of-files to the cdr of
itself, so eventually the list will be empty; and the recursive call calls itself on the
shorter list. The complete function is shorter than this description!
(defun recursive-lengths-list-many-files (list-of-files)
"Return list of lengths of each defun in LIST-OF-FILES."
(if list-of-files ; do-again-test
(append
(lengths-list-file
(expand-file-name (car list-of-files)))
(recursive-lengths-list-many-files
(cdr list-of-files)))))
In a sentence, the function returns the lengths’ list for the first of the list-of-files
appended to the result of calling itself on the rest of the list-of-files.
Here is a test of recursive-lengths-list-many-files, along with the results of running
lengths-list-file on each of the files individually.
Install recursive-lengths-list-many-files and lengths-list-file, if necessary, and then
evaluate the following expressions. You may need to change the files’ pathnames;
those here work when this Info file and the Emacs sources are located in their
customary places. To change the expressions, copy them to the *scratch* buffer, edit
them, and then evaluate them.
The results are shown after the ‘⇒’. (These results are for files from Emacs version
22.1.1; files from other versions of Emacs may produce different results.)
(cd "/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/")

(lengths-list-file "./lisp/macros.el")
⇒ (283 263 480 90)

(lengths-list-file "./lisp/mail/mailalias.el")
⇒ (38 32 29 95 178 180 321 218 324)

(lengths-list-file "./lisp/hex-util.el")
⇒ (82 71)

(recursive-lengths-list-many-files
182 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun
'("./lisp/macros.el"
"./lisp/mail/mailalias.el"
"./lisp/hex-util.el"))
⇒ (283 263 480 90 38 32 29 95 178 180 321 218 324 82 71)

The recursive-lengths-list-many-files function produces the output we want.

The next step is to prepare the data in the list for display in a graph.

14.9 Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph

The recursive-lengths-list-many-files function returns a list of numbers. Each number
records the length of a function definition. What we need to do now is transform this
data into a list of numbers suitable for generating a graph. The new list will tell how
many functions definitions contain less than 10 words and symbols, how many
contain between 10 and 19 words and symbols, how many contain between 20 and
29 words and symbols, and so on.
In brief, we need to go through the lengths’ list produced by the recursive-lengths-
list-many-files function and count the number of defuns within each range of lengths,
and produce a list of those numbers.
Based on what we have done before, we can readily foresee that it should not be
too hard to write a function that cdrs down the lengths’ list, looks at each element,
determines which length range it is in, and increments a counter for that range.
However, before beginning to write such a function, we should consider the
advantages of sorting the lengths’ list first, so the numbers are ordered from
smallest to largest. First, sorting will make it easier to count the numbers in each
range, since two adjacent numbers will either be in the same length range or in
adjacent ranges. Second, by inspecting a sorted list, we can discover the highest and
lowest number, and thereby determine the largest and smallest length range that we
will need.
Section 14.9: Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph 183

14.9.1 Sorting Lists

Emacs contains a function to sort lists, called (as you might guess) sort. The sort
function takes two arguments, the list to be sorted, and a predicate that determines
whether the first of two list elements is less than the second.
As we saw earlier (see Section 1.8.4 “Using the Wrong Type Object as an
Argument”, page 13), a predicate is a function that determines whether some
property is true or false. The sort function will reorder a list according to whatever
property the predicate uses; this means that sort can be used to sort non-numeric
lists by non-numeric criteria—it can, for example, alphabetize a list.
The < function is used when sorting a numeric list. For example,
(sort '(4 8 21 17 33 7 21 7) '<) produces this:
(4 7 7 8 17 21 21 33)
(Note that in this example, both the arguments are quoted so that the symbols are
not evaluated before being passed to sort as arguments.)
Sorting the list returned by the recursive-lengths-list-many-files function is
straightforward; it uses the < function:
(sort (recursive-lengths-list-many-files
'("./lisp/macros.el"
"./lisp/mailalias.el"
"./lisp/hex-util.el"))
'<) which
produces:
(29 32 38 71 82 90 95 178 180 218 263 283 321 324 480)
(Note that in this example, the first argument to sort is not quoted, since the
expression must be evaluated so as to produce the list that is passed to sort.)

14.9.2 Making a List of Files

The recursive-lengths-list-many-files function requires a list of files as its argument.
For our test examples, we constructed such a list by hand; but the Emacs Lisp source
directory is too large for us to do for that. Instead, we will write a function to do the
job for us. In this function, we will use both a while loop and a recursive call.
We did not have to write a function like this for older versions of GNU Emacs,
since they placed all the ‘.el’ files in one directory. Instead, we were able to use the
directory-files function, which lists the names of files that match a specified pattern
within a single directory.
However, recent versions of Emacs place Emacs Lisp files in sub-directories of
the top level lisp directory. This re-arrangement eases navigation. For example, all
the mail related files are in a lisp sub-directory called mail. But at the same time, this
arrangement forces us to create a file listing function that descends into the sub-
directories.
184 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun

We can create this function, called files-in-below-directory, using familiar

functions such as car, nthcdr, and substring in conjunction with an existing function
called directory-files-and-attributes. This latter function not only lists all the filenames
in a directory, including the names of sub-directories, but also their attributes.
To restate our goal: to create a function that will enable us to feed filenames to
recursive-lengths-list-many-files as a list that looks like this (but with more elements):
("./lisp/macros.el"
"./lisp/mail/rmail.el"
"./lisp/hex-util.el")
The directory-files-and-attributes function returns a list of lists. Each of the lists
within the main list consists of 13 elements. The first element is a string that
contains the name of the file—which, in GNU/Linux, may be a directory file, that is to
say, a file with the special attributes of a directory. The second element of the list is t
for a directory, a string for symbolic link (the string is the name linked to), or nil.
For example, the first ‘.el’ file in the lisp/ directory is abbrev.el. Its name is
/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/abbrev.el and it is not a directory or a symbolic
link.
This is how directory-files-and-attributes lists that file and its attributes:
("abbrev.el" nil
1
1000
100
(20615 27034 579989 697000)
(17905 55681 0 0)
1
(20615 26327 734791 805000)
13188 "-rw-r--
r--" t 2971624
773)

1
If current-time-list is nil the three timestamps are
(1351051674579989697 . 1000000000), (1173477761000000000 .
Section 14.9: Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph 185

1000000000), and (1351050967734791805 . 1000000000),

respectively.
On the other hand, mail/ is a directory within the lisp/ directory. The beginning of
its listing looks like this:
("mail"
t ...
)
(To learn about the different attributes, look at the documentation of file-
attributes. Bear in mind that the file-attributes function does not list the filename, so
its first element is directory-files-and-attributes’s second element.)
We will want our new function, files-in-below-directory, to list the ‘.el’ files in the
directory it is told to check, and in any directories below that directory.
This gives us a hint on how to construct files-in-below-directory: within a
directory, the function should add ‘.el’ filenames to a list; and if, within a directory,
the function comes upon a sub-directory, it should go into that sub-directory and
repeat its actions.
However, we should note that every directory contains a name that refers to
itself, called . (“dot”), and a name that refers to its parent directory, called .. (“dot
dot”). (In /, the root directory, .. refers to itself, since / has no parent.) Clearly, we do
not want our files-in-below-directory function to enter those directories, since they
always lead us, directly or indirectly, to the current directory. Consequently, our files-
in-below-directory function must do several tasks:
• Check to see whether it is looking at a filename that ends in ‘.el’; and if so, add
its name to a list.
• Check to see whether it is looking at a filename that is the name of a directory;
and if so,
− Check to see whether it is looking at . or ..; and if so skip it.
− Or else, go into that directory and repeat the process.
Let’s write a function definition to do these tasks. We will use a while loop to
move from one filename to another within a directory, checking what needs to be
done; and we will use a recursive call to repeat the actions on each sub-directory.
The recursive pattern is Accumulate (see “Accumulate”, page 135), using append as
the combiner.
Here is the function:
(defun files-in-below-directory (directory)
"List the .el files in DIRECTORY and in its sub-directories." ;; Although the
function will be used non-interactively, ;; it will be easier to test if we make it
interactive.
;; The directory will have a name such as ;;
"/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/"
(interactive "DDirectory name: ")
186 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun

(let (el-files-list
(current-directory-list
(directory-files-and-attributes directory t)))
;; while we are in the current directory
(while current-directory-list
(cond
;; check to see whether filename ends in '.el' ;; and if so, add
its name to a list.
((equal ".el" (substring (car (car current-directory-list)) -3)) (setq el-files-list
(cons (car (car current-directory-list)) el-files-list)))
;; check whether filename is that of a directory
((eq t (car (cdr (car current-directory-list))))
;; decide whether to skip or recurse (if
(equal "."
(substring (car (car current-directory-list)) -1))
;; then do nothing since filename is that of
;; current directory or parent, "." or ".."
()
;; else descend into the directory and repeat the process (setq el-files-list
(append
(files-in-below-directory
(car (car current-directory-list))) el-files-list)))))
;; move to the next filename in the list; this also
;; shortens the list so the while loop eventually comes to an end
(setq current-directory-list (cdr current-directory-list)))
;; return the filenames el-files-list))
The files-in-below-directory directory-files function takes one argument, the name
of a directory.
Thus, on my system,
(length
(files-in-below-directory "/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/")) tells me that in and
below my Lisp sources directory are 1031 ‘.el’ files.
files-in-below-directory returns a list in reverse alphabetical order. An
expression to sort the list in alphabetical order looks like this:
(sort
(files-in-below-directory "/usr/local/share/emacs/22.1.1/lisp/") 'string-lessp)

14.9.3 Counting function definitions

Our immediate goal is to generate a list that tells us how many function definitions
contain fewer than 10 words and symbols, how many contain between 10 and 19
words and symbols, how many contain between 20 and 29 words and symbols, and
so on.
Section 14.9: Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph 187

With a sorted list of numbers, this is easy: count how many elements of the list
are smaller than 10, then, after moving past the numbers just counted, count how
many are smaller than 20, then, after moving past the numbers just counted, count
how many are smaller than 30, and so on. Each of the numbers, 10, 20, 30, 40, and
the like, is one larger than the top of that range. We can call the list of such numbers
the top-of-ranges list.
If we wished, we could generate this list automatically, but it is simpler to write a
list manually. Here it is:
(defvar top-of-ranges
'(10 20 30 40 50
60 70 80 90 100
110 120 130 140 150
160 170 180 190 200
210 220 230 240 250
260 270 280 290 300)
"List specifying ranges for `defuns-per-range'.") To change the
ranges, we edit this list.
Next, we need to write the function that creates the list of the number of
definitions within each range. Clearly, this function must take the sorted-lengths and
the top-of-ranges lists as arguments.
The defuns-per-range function must do two things again and again: it must count
the number of definitions within a range specified by the current top-of-range value;
and it must shift to the next higher value in the top-of-ranges list after counting the
number of definitions in the current range. Since each of these actions is repetitive,
we can use while loops for the job. One loop counts the number of definitions in the
range defined by the current top-of-range value, and the other loop selects each of
the top-of-range values in turn.
Several entries of the sorted-lengths list are counted for each range; this means
that the loop for the sorted-lengths list will be inside the loop for the top-ofranges list,
like a small gear inside a big gear.
The inner loop counts the number of definitions within the range. It is a simple
counting loop of the type we have seen before. (See Section 11.1.3 “A loop with an
incrementing counter”, page 118.) The true-or-false test of the loop tests whether
the value from the sorted-lengths list is smaller than the current value of the top of
the range. If it is, the function increments the counter and tests the next value from
the sorted-lengths list.
The inner loop looks like this:
(while length-element-smaller-than-top-of-range
(setq number-within-range (1+ number-within-range))
(setq sorted-lengths (cdr sorted-lengths)))
The outer loop must start with the lowest value of the top-of-ranges list, and then
be set to each of the succeeding higher values in turn. This can be done with a loop
like this:
188 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun

(while top-of-ranges body-of-loop...

(setq top-of-ranges (cdr top-of-ranges)))
Put together, the two loops look like this:
(while top-of-ranges

;; Count the number of elements within the current range.

(while length-element-smaller-than-top-of-range
(setq number-within-range (1+ number-within-range))
(setq sorted-lengths (cdr sorted-lengths)))

;; Move to next range.

(setq top-of-ranges (cdr top-of-ranges)))
In addition, in each circuit of the outer loop, Emacs should record the number of
definitions within that range (the value of number-within-range) in a list. We can use
cons for this purpose. (See Section 7.2 “cons”, page 78.)
The cons function works fine, except that the list it constructs will contain the
number of definitions for the highest range at its beginning and the number of
definitions for the lowest range at its end. This is because cons attaches new
elements of the list to the beginning of the list, and since the two loops are working
their way through the lengths’ list from the lower end first, the defuns-per-rangelist
will end up largest number first. But we will want to print our graph with smallest
values first and the larger later. The solution is to reverse the order of the defuns-per-
range-list. We can do this using the nreverse function, which reverses the order of a
list.
For example,
(nreverse '(1 2 3 4)) produces:
(4 3 2 1)
Note that the nreverse function is destructive—that is, it changes the list to which
it is applied; this contrasts with the car and cdr functions, which are nondestructive.
In this case, we do not want the original defuns-per-range-list, so it does not matter
that it is destroyed. (The reverse function provides a reversed copy of a list, leaving
the original list as is.)
Put all together, the defuns-per-range looks like this:
(defun defuns-per-range (sorted-lengths top-of-ranges)
"SORTED-LENGTHS defuns in each TOP-OF-RANGES range." (let
((top-of-range (car top-of-ranges)) (number-within-range 0)
defuns-per-range-list)

;; Outer loop.
(while top-of-ranges

;; Inner loop.
(while (and
;; Need number for numeric test.
Section 14.9: Prepare the Data for Display in a Graph 189

(car sorted-lengths)
(< (car sorted-lengths) top-of-range))

;; Count number of definitions within current range.

(setq number-within-range (1+ number-within-range))
(setq sorted-lengths (cdr sorted-lengths))) ;; Exit inner

loop but remain within outer loop.

(setq defuns-per-range-list
(cons number-within-range defuns-per-range-list)) (setq number-
within-range 0); Reset count to zero.

;; Move to next range.

(setq top-of-ranges (cdr top-of-ranges)) ;; Specify
next top of range value.
(setq top-of-range (car top-of-ranges)))

;; Exit outer loop and count the number of defuns larger than ;; the
largest top-of-range value.
(setq defuns-per-range-list
(cons
(length sorted-lengths) defuns-per-range-list))

;; Return a list of the number of definitions within each range, ;;

smallest to largest.
(nreverse defuns-per-range-list)))
The function is straightforward except for one subtle feature. The true-or-false test
of the inner loop looks like this:
(and (car sorted-lengths)
(< (car sorted-lengths) top-of-range))
instead of like this:
(< (car sorted-lengths) top-of-range)
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the first item in the sorted-
lengths list is less than the value of the top of the range.
The simple version of the test works fine unless the sorted-lengths list has a nil
value. In that case, the (carsorted-lengths) expression function returns nil. The <
function cannot compare a number to nil, which is an empty list, so Emacs signals an
error and stops the function from attempting to continue to execute.
The sorted-lengths list always becomes nil when the counter reaches the end of
the list. This means that any attempt to use the defuns-per-range function with the
simple version of the test will fail.
We solve the problem by using the (carsorted-lengths) expression in conjunction
with the and expression. The (carsorted-lengths) expression returns a non-nil value so
190 Chapter 14: Counting Words in a defun

long as the list has at least one number within it, but returns nil if the list is empty.
The and expression first evaluates the (carsorted-lengths) expression, and if it is nil,
returns false without evaluating the < expression. But if the (carsorted-lengths)
expression returns a non-nil value, the and expression evaluates the < expression,
and returns that value as the value of the and expression. This way, we avoid an
error.
(For information about and, see “The kill-new function”, page 97.)
Here is a short test of the defuns-per-range function. First, evaluate the expression
that binds (a shortened) top-of-ranges list to the list of values, then evaluate the
expression for binding the sorted-lengths list, and then evaluate the defuns-per-range
function.
;; (Shorter list than we will use later.)
(setq top-of-ranges
'(110 120 130 140 150
160 170 180 190 200))

(setq sorted-lengths
'(85 86 110 116 122 129 154 176 179 200 265 300 300))

(defuns-per-range sorted-lengths top-of-ranges) The list

returned looks like this:
(2 2 2 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 4)
Indeed, there are two elements of the sorted-lengths list smaller than 110, two
elements between 110 and 119, two elements between 120 and 129, and so on.
There are four elements with a value of 200 or larger.
 191
15 Readying a Graph
Our goal is to construct a graph showing the numbers of function definitions of
various lengths in the Emacs lisp sources.
As a practical matter, if you were creating a graph, you would probably use a
program such as gnuplot to do the job. (gnuplot is nicely integrated into GNU Emacs.)
In this case, however, we create one from scratch, and in the process we will re-
acquaint ourselves with some of what we learned before and learn more.
In this chapter, we will first write a simple graph printing function. This first
definition will be a prototype, a rapidly written function that enables us to
reconnoiter this unknown graph-making territory. We will discover dragons, or find
that they are myth. After scouting the terrain, we will feel more confident and
enhance the function to label the axes automatically.
Since Emacs is designed to be flexible and work with all kinds of terminals,
including character-only terminals, the graph will need to be made from one of the
typewriter symbols. An asterisk will do; as we enhance the graph-printing function,
we can make the choice of symbol a user option.
We can call this function graph-body-print; it will take a numbers-list as its only
argument. At this stage, we will not label the graph, but only print its body.
The graph-body-print function inserts a vertical column of asterisks for each
element in the numbers-list. The height of each line is determined by the value of that
element of the numbers-list.
Inserting columns is a repetitive act; that means that this function can be written
either with a while loop or recursively.
Our first challenge is to discover how to print a column of asterisks. Usually, in
Emacs, we print characters onto a screen horizontally, line by line, by typing. We
have two routes we can follow: write our own column-insertion function or discover
whether one exists in Emacs.
To see whether there is one in Emacs, we can use the M-xapropos command. This
command is like the C-ha (command-apropos) command, except that the latter finds
only those functions that are commands. The M-xapropos command lists all symbols
that match a regular expression, including functions that are not interactive.
What we want to look for is some command that prints or inserts columns. Very
likely, the name of the function will contain either the word “print” or the word
“insert” or the word “column”. Therefore, we can simply type M-xaproposRET print\|
insert\|columnRET and look at the result. On my system, this command once took
quite some time, and then produced a list of 79 functions and variables. Now it does
not take much time at all and produces a list of 211 functions and variables.
Scanning down the list, the only function that looks as if it might do the job is insert-
rectangle.
Indeed, this is the function we want; its documentation says:
insert-rectangle:
Insert text of RECTANGLE with upper left corner at point. RECTANGLE's first line is
inserted at point, its second line is inserted at a point vertically under point, etc.
192 Chapter 15: Readying a Graph
RECTANGLE should be a list of strings.
After this command, the mark is at the upper left corner and point is at the
lower right corner.
We can run a quick test, to make sure it does what we expect of it.
Here is the result of placing the cursor after the insert-rectangle expression and
typing C-uC-xC-e (eval-last-sexp). The function inserts the strings ‘"first"’, ‘"second"’,
and ‘"third"’ at and below point. Also the function returns nil.
(insert-rectangle '("first" "second" "third"))first second thirdnil
Of course, we won’t be inserting the text of the insert-rectangle expression itself into
the buffer in which we are making the graph, but will call the function from our
program. We shall, however, have to make sure that point is in the buffer at the place
where the insert-rectangle function will insert its column of strings.
If you are reading this in Info, you can see how this works by switching to
another buffer, such as the *scratch* buffer, placing point somewhere in the buffer,
typing M-:, typing the insert-rectangle expression into the minibuffer at the prompt,
and then typing RET. This causes Emacs to evaluate the expression in the minibuffer,
but to use as the value of point the position of point in the *scratch* buffer. (M-: is
the key binding for eval-expression. Also, nil does not appear in the *scratch* buffer
since the expression is evaluated in the minibuffer.)
We find when we do this that point ends up at the end of the last inserted line—
that is to say, this function moves point as a side-effect. If we were to repeat the
command, with point at this position, the next insertion would be below and to the
right of the previous insertion. We don’t want this! If we are going to make a bar
graph, the columns need to be beside each other.
So we discover that each cycle of the column-inserting while loop must reposition
point to the place we want it, and that place will be at the top, not the bottom, of the
column. Moreover, we remember that when we print a graph, we do not expect all
the columns to be the same height. This means that the top of each column may be at
a different height from the previous one. We cannot simply reposition point to the
same line each time, but moved over to the right—or perhaps we can. . .
We are planning to make the columns of the bar graph out of asterisks. The
number of asterisks in the column is the number specified by the current element of
the numbers-list. We need to construct a list of asterisks of the right length for each
call to insert-rectangle. If this list consists solely of the requisite number of asterisks,
then we will have to position point the right number of lines above the base for the
graph to print correctly. This could be difficult.
Alternatively, if we can figure out some way to pass insert-rectangle a list of the
same length each time, then we can place point on the same line each time, but move
it over one column to the right for each new column. If we do this, however, some of
the entries in the list passed to insert-rectangle must be blanks rather than asterisks.
For example, if the maximum height of the graph is 5, but the height of the column is
3, then insert-rectangle requires an argument that looks like this:
(" " " " "*" "*" "*")
 193
This last proposal is not so difficult, so long as we can determine the column
height. There are two ways for us to specify the column height: we can arbitrarily
state what it will be, which would work fine for graphs of that height; or we can
search through the list of numbers and use the maximum height of the list as the
maximum height of the graph. If the latter operation were difficult, then the former
procedure would be easiest, but there is a function built into Emacs that determines
the maximum of its arguments. We can use that function. The function is called max
and it returns the largest of all its arguments, which must be numbers. Thus, for
example,
(max 3 4 6 5 7 3)
returns 7. (A corresponding function called min returns the smallest of all its
arguments.)
However, we cannot simply call max on the numbers-list; the max function expects
numbers as its argument, not a list of numbers. Thus, the following expression,
(max '(3 4 6 5 7 3))
produces the following error message;
Wrong type of argument: number-or-marker-p, (3 4 6 5 7 3)
We need a function that passes a list of arguments to a function. This function is
apply. This function applies its first argument (a function) to its remaining
arguments, the last of which may be a list.
For example,
(apply 'max 3 4 7 3 '(4 8 5)) returns 8.
(Incidentally, I don’t know how you would learn of this function without a book
such as this. It is possible to discover other functions, like search-forward or insert-
rectangle, by guessing at a part of their names and then using apropos. Even though
its base in metaphor is clear—apply its first argument to the rest—I doubt a novice
would come up with that particular word when using apropos or other aid. Of
course, I could be wrong; after all, the function was first named by someone who had
to invent it.)
The second and subsequent arguments to apply are optional, so we can use apply
to call a function and pass the elements of a list to it, like this, which also returns 8:
(apply 'max '(4 8 5))
This latter way is how we will use apply. The recursive-lengths-list-manyfiles
function returns a numbers’ list to which we can apply max (we could also apply max
to the sorted numbers’ list; it does not matter whether the list is sorted or not.)
Hence, the operation for finding the maximum height of the graph is this:
(setq max-graph-height (apply 'max numbers-list))
Now we can return to the question of how to create a list of strings for a column
of the graph. Told the maximum height of the graph and the number of asterisks that
should appear in the column, the function should return a list of strings for the
insert-rectangle command to insert.
Each column is made up of asterisks or blanks. Since the function is passed the
value of the height of the column and the number of asterisks in the column, the
194 Chapter 15: Readying a Graph
number of blanks can be found by subtracting the number of asterisks from the
height of the column. Given the number of blanks and the number of asterisks, two
while loops can be used to construct the list:
;;; First version.
(defun column-of-graph (max-graph-height actual-height)
"Return list of strings that is one column of a graph." (let ((insert-list nil)
(number-of-top-blanks
(- max-graph-height actual-height)))

;; Fill in asterisks.
(while (> actual-height 0)
(setq insert-list (cons "*" insert-list))
(setq actual-height (1- actual-height)))

;; Fill in blanks.
(while (> number-of-top-blanks 0)
(setq insert-list (cons " " insert-list)) (setq number-of-
top-blanks (1- number-of-top-blanks)))

;; Return whole list.

insert-list))
If you install this function and then evaluate the following expression you will see
that it returns the list as desired:
(column-of-graph 5 3) returns
(" " " " "*" "*" "*")
As written, column-of-graph contains a major flaw: the symbols used for the blank
and for the marked entries in the column are hard-coded as a space and asterisk.
This is fine for a prototype, but you, or another user, may wish to use other symbols.
For example, in testing the graph function, you may want to use a period in place of
the space, to make sure the point is being repositioned properly each time the insert-
rectangle function is called; or you might want to substitute a ‘+’ sign or other symbol
for the asterisk. You might even want to make a graph-column that is more than one
display column wide. The program should be more flexible. The way to do that is to
replace the blank and the asterisk with two variables that we can call graph-blank
and graph-symbol and define those variables separately.
Also, the documentation is not well written. These considerations lead us to the
second version of the function:
(defvar graph-symbol "*"
"String used as symbol in graph, usually an asterisk.")

(defvar graph-blank " "

"String used as blank in graph, usually a blank space. graph-blank
must be the same number of columns wide as graph-symbol.")
(For an explanation of defvar, see Section 8.5 “Initializing a Variable with defvar”,
page 104.)
 195
;;; Second version.
(defun column-of-graph (max-graph-height actual-height)
"Return MAX-GRAPH-HEIGHT strings; ACTUAL-HEIGHT are graph-symbols.

The graph-symbols are contiguous entries at the end of the list.

The list will be inserted as one column of a graph.
The strings are either graph-blank or graph-symbol."

(let ((insert-list nil)

(number-of-top-blanks
(- max-graph-height actual-height)))

;; Fill in graph-symbols.
(while (> actual-height 0)
(setq insert-list (cons graph-symbol insert-list))
(setq actual-height (1- actual-height)))

;; Fill in graph-blanks.
(while (> number-of-top-blanks 0)
(setq insert-list (cons graph-blank insert-list)) (setq number-of-
top-blanks (1- number-of-top-blanks)))

;; Return whole list. insert-list))

If we wished, we could rewrite column-of-graph a third time to provide optionally
for a line graph as well as for a bar graph. This would not be hard to do. One way to
think of a line graph is that it is no more than a bar graph in which the part of each
bar that is below the top is blank. To construct a column for a line graph, the function
first constructs a list of blanks that is one shorter than the value, then it uses cons to
attach a graph symbol to the list; then it uses cons again to attach the top blanks to
the list.
It is easy to see how to write such a function, but since we don’t need it, we will
not do it. But the job could be done, and if it were done, it would be done with
column-of-graph. Even more important, it is worth noting that few changes would
have to be made anywhere else. The enhancement, if we ever wish to make it, is
simple.
Now, finally, we come to our first actual graph printing function. This prints the
body of a graph, not the labels for the vertical and horizontal axes, so we can call this
graph-body-print.

15.1 The graph-body-print Function

After our preparation in the preceding section, the graph-body-print function is
straightforward. The function will print column after column of asterisks and blanks,
using the elements of a numbers’ list to specify the number of asterisks in each
column. This is a repetitive act, which means we can use a decrementing while loop
196 Chapter 15: Readying a Graph
or recursive function for the job. In this section, we will write the definition using a
while loop.
The column-of-graph function requires the height of the graph as an argument, so
we should determine and record that as a local variable.
This leads us to the following template for the while loop version of this function:
(defun graph-body-print (numbers-list)
"documentation..." (let
((height ...
...))

(while numbers-list insert-columns-and-reposition-point

(setq numbers-list (cdr numbers-list))))) We need to fill
in the slots of the template.
Clearly, we can use the (apply'maxnumbers-list) expression to determine the
height of the graph.
The while loop will cycle through the numbers-list one element at a time. As it is
shortened by the (setqnumbers-list(cdrnumbers-list)) expression, the car of each
instance of the list is the value of the argument for column-of-graph.
At each cycle of the while loop, the insert-rectangle function inserts the list
returned by column-of-graph. Since the insert-rectangle function moves point to the
lower right of the inserted rectangle, we need to save the location of point at the
time the rectangle is inserted, move back to that position after the rectangle is
inserted, and then move horizontally to the next place from which insert-rectangle is
called.
If the inserted columns are one character wide, as they will be if single blanks
and asterisks are used, the repositioning command is simply (forward-char1);
however, the width of a column may be greater than one. This means that the
repositioning command should be written (forward-charsymbol-width). The symbol-
width itself is the length of a graph-blank and can be found using the expression
(lengthgraph-blank). The best place to bind the symbol-width variable to the value of
the width of graph column is in the varlist of the let expression.
Section 15.1: The graph-body-print Function

These considerations lead to the following function definition:

(defun graph-body-print (numbers-list) "Print a bar
graph of the NUMBERS-LIST.
The numbers-list consists of the Y-axis values."

(let ((height (apply 'max numbers-list)) (symbol-width (length graph-

blank)) from-position)

(while numbers-list
(setq from-position (point))
(insert-rectangle
(column-of-graph height (car numbers-list)))
 197
(goto-char from-position) (forward-
char symbol-width) ;; Draw graph
column by column.
(sit-for 0)
(setq numbers-list (cdr numbers-list))) ;; Place point
for X axis labels.
(forward-line height)
(insert "\n")
))
The one unexpected expression in this function is the (sit-for0) expression in the
while loop. This expression makes the graph printing operation more interesting to
watch than it would be otherwise. The expression causes Emacs to sit or do nothing
for a zero length of time and then redraw the screen. Placed here, it causes Emacs to
redraw the screen column by column. Without it, Emacs would not redraw the
screen until the function exits.
We can test graph-body-print with a short list of numbers.
1. Install graph-symbol, graph-blank, column-of-graph, which are in Chapter 15
“Readying a Graph”, page 187, and graph-body-print.
2. Copy the following expression:
(graph-body-print '(1 2 3 4 6 4 3 5 7 6 5 2 3))

3. Switch to the *scratch* buffer and place the cursor where you want the graph to
start.
4. Type M-: (eval-expression).
5. Yank the graph-body-print expression into the minibuffer with C-y (yank).
6. Press RET to evaluate the graph-body-print expression.
Emacs will print a graph like this:
*
* **
* ****
*** ****
********* * ************
*************
15.2 The recursive-graph-body-print Function
The graph-body-print function may also be written recursively. The recursive solution
is divided into two parts: an outside wrapper that uses a let expression to determine
the values of several variables that need only be found once, such as the maximum
height of the graph, and an inside function that is called recursively to print the
graph.
The wrapper is uncomplicated:
(defun recursive-graph-body-print (numbers-list) "Print a bar graph of
the NUMBERS-LIST.
198 Chapter 15: Readying a Graph
The numbers-list consists of the Y-axis values."
(let ((height (apply 'max numbers-list)) (symbol-width (length graph-
blank)) from-position)
(recursive-graph-body-print-internal numbers-
list height symbol-width)))
The recursive function is a little more difficult. It has four parts: the do-againtest,
the printing code, the recursive call, and the next-step-expression. The doagain-test
is a when expression that determines whether the numbers-list contains any
remaining elements; if it does, the function prints one column of the graph using the
printing code and calls itself again. The function calls itself again according to the
value produced by the next-step-expression which causes the call to act on a shorter
version of the numbers-list.
(defun recursive-graph-body-print-internal (numbers-
list height symbol-width) "Print a bar graph.
Used within recursive-graph-body-print function."

(when numbers-list
(setq from-position (point))
(insert-rectangle
(column-of-graph height (car numbers-list)))
(goto-char from-position)
(forward-char symbol-width)
(sit-for 0) ; Draw graph column by column.
(recursive-graph-body-print-internal
(cdr numbers-list) height symbol-width)))
Section 15.4: Exercise

After installation, this expression can be tested; here is a sample:

(recursive-graph-body-print '(3 2 5 6 7 5 3 4 6 4 3 2 1)) Here is what
recursive-graph-body-print produces:
*
** *
**** *
**** ***
* *********
************
*************
Either of these two functions, graph-body-print or recursive-graph-bodyprint,
create the body of a graph.

15.3 Need for Printed Axes

A graph needs printed axes, so you can orient yourself. For a do-once project, it may
be reasonable to draw the axes by hand using Emacs’s Picture mode; but a graph
drawing function may be used more than once.
 199
For this reason, I have written enhancements to the basic print-graph-body
function that automatically print labels for the horizontal and vertical axes. Since the
label printing functions do not contain much new material, I have placed their
description in an appendix. See Appendix C “A Graph with Labeled Axes”, page 233.

15.4 Exercise
Write a line graph version of the graph printing functions.
200 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
16 Your .emacs File
“You don’t have to like Emacs to like it”—this seemingly paradoxical statement is the
secret of GNU Emacs. The plain, out-of-the-box Emacs is a generic tool. Most people
who use it customize it to suit themselves.
GNU Emacs is mostly written in Emacs Lisp; this means that by writing expressions
in Emacs Lisp you can change or extend Emacs.
There are those who appreciate Emacs’s default configuration. After all, Emacs
starts you in C mode when you edit a C file, starts you in Fortran mode when you edit
a Fortran file, and starts you in Fundamental mode when you edit an unadorned file.
This all makes sense, if you do not know who is going to use Emacs. Who knows
what a person hopes to do with an unadorned file? Fundamental mode is the right
default for such a file, just as C mode is the right default for editing C code. (Enough
programming languages have syntaxes that enable them to share or nearly share
features, so C mode is now provided by CC mode, the C Collection.)
But when you do know who is going to use Emacs—you, yourself—then it makes
sense to customize Emacs.
For example, I seldom want Fundamental mode when I edit an otherwise
undistinguished file; I want Text mode. This is why I customize Emacs: so it suits me.
You can customize and extend Emacs by writing or adapting a ~/.emacs file. This
is your personal initialization file; its contents, written in Emacs Lisp, tell Emacs
what to do.16
A ~/.emacs file contains Emacs Lisp code. You can write this code yourself; or you
can use Emacs’s customize feature to write the code for you. You can combine your
own expressions and auto-written Customize expressions in your .emacs file.
(I myself prefer to write my own expressions, except for those, particularly fonts,
that I find easier to manipulate using the customize command. I combine the two
methods.)
Most of this chapter is about writing expressions yourself. It describes a simple
.emacs file; for more information, see Section “The Init File” in The GNU Emacs
Manual, and Section “The Init File” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

16.1 Site-wide Initialization Files

In addition to your personal initialization file, Emacs automatically loads various
site-wide initialization files, if they exist. These have the same form as your .emacs
file, but are loaded by everyone.
Two site-wide initialization files, site-load.el and site-init.el, are loaded into Emacs
and then dumped if a dumped version of Emacs is created, as is most common.

16 You may also add .el to ~/.emacs and call it a ~/.emacs.el file. In the past, you were
forbidden to type the extra keystrokes that the name ~/.emacs.el requires, but now you may.
The new format is consistent with the Emacs Lisp file naming conventions; the old format
saves typing.
 201
(Dumped copies of Emacs load more quickly. However, once a file is Section 16.2:
Specifying Variables using defcustom

loaded and dumped, a change to it does not lead to a change in Emacs unless you
load it yourself or re-dump Emacs. See Section “Building Emacs” in The GNU Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual, and the INSTALL file.)
Three other site-wide initialization files are loaded automatically each time you
start Emacs, if they exist. These are site-start.el, which is loaded before your .emacs
file, and default.el, and the terminal type file, which are both loaded after your .emacs
file.
Settings and definitions in your .emacs file will overwrite conflicting settings and
definitions in a site-start.el file, if it exists; but the settings and definitions in a
default.el or terminal type file will overwrite those in your .emacs file. (You can
prevent interference from a terminal type file by setting term-file-prefix to nil. See
Section 16.11 “A Simple Extension”, page 207.)
The INSTALL file that comes in the distribution contains descriptions of the site-
init.el and site-load.el files.
The loadup.el, startup.el, and loaddefs.el files control loading. These files are in the
lisp directory of the Emacs distribution and are worth perusing.
The loaddefs.el file contains a good many suggestions as to what to put into your
own .emacs file, or into a site-wide initialization file.

16.2 Specifying Variables using defcustom

You can specify variables using defcustom so that you and others can then use
Emacs’s customize feature to set their values. (You cannot use customize to write
function definitions; but you can write defuns in your .emacs file. Indeed, you can
write any Lisp expression in your .emacs file.)
The customize feature depends on the defcustom macro. Although you can use
defvar or setq for variables that users set, the defcustom macro is designed for the
job.
You can use your knowledge of defvar for writing the first three arguments for
defcustom. The first argument to defcustom is the name of the variable. The second
argument is the variable’s initial value, if any; and this value is set only if the value
has not already been set. The third argument is the documentation.
The fourth and subsequent arguments to defcustom specify types and options;
these are not featured in defvar. (These arguments are optional.)
Each of these arguments consists of a keyword followed by a value. Each keyword
starts with the colon character ‘:’.
For example, the customizable user option variable text-mode-hook looks like this:
(defcustom text-mode-hook nil
"Normal hook run when entering Text mode and many related modes."
202 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
:type 'hook
:options '(turn-on-auto-fill flyspell-mode)
:group 'wp)
The name of the variable is text-mode-hook; it has no default value; and its
documentation string tells you what it does.
The :type keyword tells Emacs the kind of data to which text-mode-hook should be
set and how to display the value in a Customization buffer.
The :options keyword specifies a suggested list of values for the variable. Usually,
:options applies to a hook. The list is only a suggestion; it is not exclusive; a person
who sets the variable may set it to other values; the list shown following the :options
keyword is intended to offer convenient choices to a user.
Finally, the :group keyword tells the Emacs Customization command in which
group the variable is located. This tells where to find it.
The defcustom macro recognizes more than a dozen keywords. For more
information, see Section “Writing Customization Definitions” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.
Consider text-mode-hook as an example.
There are two ways to customize this variable. You can use the customization
command or write the appropriate expressions yourself.
Using the customization command, you can type:
M-x customize and find that the group for editing files of text is called “Text”.
Enter that group. Text Mode Hook is the first member. You can click on its various
options, such as turn-on-auto-fill, to set the values. After you click on the button to
Save for Future Sessions
Emacs will write an expression into your .emacs file. It will look like this:
(custom-set-variables
;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
'(text-mode-hook '(turn-on-auto-fill text-mode-hook-identify)))
(The text-mode-hook-identify function tells toggle-text-mode-auto-fill which buffers are
in Text mode. It comes on automatically.)
The custom-set-variables function works somewhat differently than a setq. While I
have never learned the differences, I modify the custom-set-variables expressions in
my .emacs file by hand: I make the changes in what appears to me to be a reasonable
manner and have not had any problems. Others prefer to use the Customization
command and let Emacs do the work for them.
Another custom-set-... function is custom-set-faces. This function sets the various
font faces. Over time, I have set a considerable number of faces. Some of the Section
16.3: Beginning a .emacs File
 203
time, I re-set them using customize; other times, I simply edit the custom-setfaces
expression in my .emacs file itself.
The second way to customize your text-mode-hook is to set it yourself in your
.emacs file using code that has nothing to do with the custom-set-... functions. When
you do this, and later use customize, you will see a message that says
CHANGED outside Customize; operating on it here may be unreliable.
This message is only a warning. If you click on the button to
Save for Future Sessions
Emacs will write a custom-set-... expression near the end of your .emacs file that will
be evaluated after your hand-written expression. It will, therefore, overrule your
hand-written expression. No harm will be done. When you do this, however, be
careful to remember which expression is active; if you forget, you may confuse
yourself.
So long as you remember where the values are set, you will have no trouble. In any
event, the values are always set in your initialization file, which is usually called
.emacs.
I myself use customize for hardly anything. Mostly, I write expressions myself.
Incidentally, to be more complete concerning defines: defsubst defines an inline
function. The syntax is just like that of defun. defconst defines a symbol as a constant.
The intent is that neither programs nor users should ever change a value set by
defconst. (You can change it; the value set is a variable; but please do not.)

16.3 Beginning a .emacs File

When you start Emacs, it loads your .emacs file unless you tell it not to by specifying
‘-q’ on the command line. (The emacs-q command gives you a plain, out-of-thebox
Emacs.)
A .emacs file contains Lisp expressions. Often, these are no more than expressions
to set values; sometimes they are function definitions.
See Section “The Init File ~/.emacs” in The GNU Emacs Manual, for a short
description of initialization files.
This chapter goes over some of the same ground, but is a walk among extracts from
a complete, long-used .emacs file—my own.
The first part of the file consists of comments: reminders to myself. By now, of
course, I remember these things, but when I started, I did not.
;;;; Bob's .emacs file
; Robert J. Chassell
; 26 September 1985
Look at that date! I started this file a long time ago. I have been adding to it ever since.
; Each section in this file is introduced by a
; line beginning with four semicolons; and each ; entry is
introduced by a line beginning with ; three semicolons.
204 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
This describes the usual conventions for comments in Emacs Lisp. Everything on a line
that follows a semicolon is a comment. Two, three, and four semicolons are used as
subsection and section markers. (See Section “Comments” in The GNU
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more about comments.)
;;;; The Help Key
; Control-h is the help key;
; after typing control-h, type a letter to ; indicate the subject
about which you want help. ; For an explanation of the help
facility, ; type control-h two times in a row.
Just remember: type C-h two times for help.
; To find out about any mode, type control-h m
; while in that mode. For example, to find out ; about mail
mode, enter mail mode and then type ; control-h m.
“Mode help”, as I call this, is very helpful. Usually, it tells you all you need to know.
Of course, you don’t need to include comments like these in your .emacs file. I
included them in mine because I kept forgetting about Mode help or the conventions
for comments—but I was able to remember to look here to remind myself.

16.4 Text and Auto Fill Mode

Now we come to the part that turns on Text mode and Auto Fill mode17.
;;; Text mode and Auto Fill mode
;; The next two lines put Emacs into Text mode
;; and Auto Fill mode, and are for writers who ;; want to start
writing prose rather than code.
(setq-default major-mode 'text-mode)
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
Here is the first part of this .emacs file that does something besides remind a
forgetful human!
The first of the two lines in parentheses tells Emacs to turn on Text mode when you
find a file, unless that file should go into some other mode, such as C mode.
When Emacs reads a file, it looks at the extension to the file name, if any. (The
extension is the part that comes after a ‘.’.) If the file ends with a ‘.c’ or ‘.h’ extension
then Emacs turns on C mode. Also, Emacs looks at first nonblank line of the file; if
the line says ‘-*-C-*-’, Emacs turns on C mode. Emacs possesses a list of extensions
and specifications that it uses automatically. In addition, Emacs looks near the last
page for a per-buffer, local variables list, if any.
See sections “How Major Modes are Chosen” and “Local Variables in Files” in The
GNU Emacs Manual.
Now, back to the .emacs file.

17 This section suggests settings that are more suitable for writers. For programmers, the
default mode will be set to the corresponding prog-mode automatically based on the type of
the file. And it’s perfectly fine if you want to keep the fundamental mode as the default mode.
 205
Section 16.4: Text and Auto Fill Mode

Here is the line again; how does it work?

(setq-default major-mode 'text-mode)
This line is a short, but complete Emacs Lisp expression.
We are already familiar with setq. We use a similar macro setq-default to set the
following variable, major-mode18, to the subsequent value, which is text-mode. The
single-quote before text-mode tells Emacs to deal directly with the text-mode symbol,
not with whatever it might stand for. See Section 1.9 “Setting the Value of a Variable”,
page 16, for a reminder of how setq works. The main point is that there is no
difference between the procedure you use to set a value in your .emacs file and the
procedure you use anywhere else in Emacs.
Here is the next line:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
In this line, the add-hook command adds turn-on-auto-fill to the variable. turn-on-
auto-fill is the name of a program, that, you guessed it!, turns on Auto Fill mode.
Every time Emacs turns on Text mode, Emacs runs the commands hooked onto
Text mode. So every time Emacs turns on Text mode, Emacs also turns on Auto Fill
mode.
In brief, the first line causes Emacs to enter Text mode when you edit a file,
unless the file name extension, a first non-blank line, or local variables to tell Emacs
otherwise.
Text mode among other actions, sets the syntax table to work conveniently for
writers. In Text mode, Emacs considers an apostrophe as part of a word like a letter;
but Emacs does not consider a period or a space as part of a word. Thus, M-f moves
you over ‘it's’. On the other hand, in C mode, M-f stops just after the ‘t’ of ‘it's’.
The second line causes Emacs to turn on Auto Fill mode when it turns on Text
mode. In Auto Fill mode, Emacs automatically breaks a line that is too wide and
brings the excessively wide part of the line down to the next line. Emacs breaks lines
between words, not within them.
When Auto Fill mode is turned off, lines continue to the right as you type them.
Depending on how you set the value of truncate-lines, the words you type either
disappear off the right side of the screen, or else are shown, in a rather ugly and
unreadable manner, as a continuation line on the screen.
In addition, in this part of my .emacs file, I tell the Emacs fill commands to insert
two spaces after a colon:
(setq colon-double-space t)

18 We use setq-default here because text-mode is buffer-local. If we use setq, it will only
apply to the current buffer, whereas using setq-default will also apply to newly created buffers.
This is not recommended for programmers.
206 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
16.5 Mail Aliases
Here is a setq that turns on mail aliases, along with more reminders.
;;; Message mode
; To enter message mode, type 'C-x m'
; To enter RMAIL (for reading mail),
; type 'M-x rmail'
(setq mail-aliases t)
This setq sets the value of the variable mail-aliases to t. Since t means true, the line
says, in effect, “Yes, use mail aliases.”
Mail aliases are convenient short names for long email addresses or for lists of
email addresses. The file where you keep your aliases is ~/.mailrc. You write an alias
like this:
alias geo george@foobar.wiz.edu
When you write a message to George, address it to ‘geo’; the mailer will automatically
expand ‘geo’ to the full address.

16.6 Indent Tabs Mode

By default, Emacs inserts tabs in place of multiple spaces when it formats a region.
(For example, you might indent many lines of text all at once with the indent-region
command.) Tabs look fine on a terminal or with ordinary printing, but they produce
badly indented output when you use TEX or Texinfo since TEX ignores tabs.
The following turns off Indent Tabs mode:
;;; Prevent Extraneous Tabs
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
Note that this line uses setq-default rather than the setq that we have seen before;
setq-default sets values only in buffers that do not have their own local values for the
variable.
See sections “Tabs vs. Spaces” and “Local Variables in Files” in The GNU Emacs
Manual.
Section 16.7: Some Key Bindings

16.7 Some Key Bindings

Now for some personal key bindings:
;;; Compare windows
(global-set-key "\C-cw" 'compare-windows) compare-windows is a nifty command that
compares the text in your current window with text in the next window. It makes the
comparison by starting at point in each window, moving over text in each window as
far as they match. I use this command all the time.
This also shows how to set a key globally, for all modes.
The command is global-set-key. It is followed by the key binding. In a .emacs file,
the keybinding is written as shown: \C-c stands for Control-C, which means to press
 207
the control key and the c key at the same time. The w means to press the w key. The
key binding is surrounded by double quotation marks. In documentation, you would
write this as C-cw. (If you were binding a META key, such as M-c, rather than a CTRL
key, you would write \M-c in your .emacs file. See Section “Rebinding Keys in Your
Init File” in The GNU Emacs Manual, for details.)
The command invoked by the keys is compare-windows. Note that compare-
windows is preceded by a single-quote; otherwise, Emacs would first try to evaluate
the symbol to determine its value.
These three things, the double quotation marks, the backslash before the ‘C’, and
the single-quote are necessary parts of key binding that I tend to forget. Fortunately,
I have come to remember that I should look at my existing .emacs file, and adapt
what is there.
As for the key binding itself: C-cw. This combines the prefix key, C-c, with a single
character, in this case, w. This set of keys, C-c followed by a single character, is strictly
reserved for individuals’ own use. (I call these own keys, since these are for my own
use.) You should always be able to create such a key binding for your own use
without stomping on someone else’s key binding. If you ever write an extension to
Emacs, please avoid taking any of these keys for public use. Create a key like C-cC-w
instead. Otherwise, we will run out of own keys.
Here is another key binding, with a comment:
;;; Key binding for 'occur'
; I use occur a lot, so let's bind it to a key:
(global-set-key "\C-co" 'occur)
The occur command shows all the lines in the current buffer that contain a match
for a regular expression. When the region is active, occur restricts matches to such
region. Otherwise it uses the entire buffer. Matching lines are shown in a buffer
called *Occur*. That buffer serves as a menu to jump to occurrences.
Here is how to unbind a key, so it does not work:
;;; Unbind 'C-x f'
(global-unset-key "\C-xf")
There is a reason for this unbinding: I found I inadvertently typed C-xf when I
meant to type C-xC-f. Rather than find a file, as I intended, I accidentally set the width
for filled text, almost always to a width I did not want. Since I hardly ever reset my
default width, I simply unbound the key.
The following rebinds an existing key:
;;; Rebind 'C-x C-b' for 'buffer-menu'
(global-set-key "\C-x\C-b" 'buffer-menu)
By default, C-xC-b runs the list-buffers command. This command lists your buffers
in another window. Since I almost always want to do something in that window, I
prefer the buffer-menu command, which not only lists the buffers, but moves point
into that window.
208 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
16.8 Keymaps
Emacs uses keymaps to record which keys call which commands. When you use
global-set-key to set the key binding for a single command in all parts of Emacs, you
are specifying the key binding in current-global-map.
Specific modes, such as C mode or Text mode, have their own keymaps; the mode-
specific keymaps override the global map that is shared by all buffers.
The global-set-key function binds, or rebinds, the global keymap. For example, the
following binds the key C-xC-b to the function buffer-menu:
(global-set-key "\C-x\C-b" 'buffer-menu)
Mode-specific keymaps are bound using the define-key function, which takes a
specific keymap as an argument, as well as the key and the command. For example,
my .emacs file contains the following expression to bind the texinfo-insert@group
command to C-cC-cg:
(define-key texinfo-mode-map "\C-c\C-cg" 'texinfo-insert-@group)
The texinfo-insert-@group function itself is a little extension to Texinfo mode that
inserts ‘@group’ into a Texinfo file. I use this command all the time and prefer to type
the three strokes C-cC-cg rather than the six strokes @group. (‘@group’ and its
matching ‘@endgroup’ are commands that keep all enclosed text together on one
page; many multi-line examples in this book are surrounded by
‘@group...@endgroup’.)
Section 16.9: Loading Files

Here is the texinfo-insert-@group function definition:

(defun texinfo-insert-@group ()
"Insert the string @group in a Texinfo buffer."
(interactive)
(beginning-of-line)
(insert "@group\n"))
(Of course, I could have used Abbrev mode to save typing, rather than write a
function to insert a word; but I prefer key strokes consistent with other Texinfo
mode key bindings.)
You will see numerous define-key expressions in loaddefs.el as well as in the various
mode libraries, such as cc-mode.el and lisp-mode.el.
See Section “Customizing Key Bindings” in The GNU Emacs Manual, and Section
“Keymaps” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more information about
keymaps.

16.9 Loading Files

Many people in the GNU Emacs community have written extensions to Emacs. As time
goes by, these extensions are often included in new releases. For example, the
Calendar and Diary packages are now part of the standard GNU Emacs, as is Calc.
 209
You can use a load command to evaluate a complete file and thereby install all the
functions and variables in the file into Emacs. For example:
(load "~/emacs/slowsplit")
This evaluates, i.e., loads, the slowsplit.el file or if it exists, the faster, byte
compiled slowsplit.elc file from the emacs sub-directory of your home directory. The
file contains the function split-window-quietly, which John Robinson wrote in 1989.
The split-window-quietly function splits a window with the minimum of redisplay.
I installed it in 1989 because it worked well with the slow 1200 baud terminals I was
then using. Nowadays, I only occasionally come across such a slow connection, but I
continue to use the function because I like the way it leaves the bottom half of a
buffer in the lower of the new windows and the top half in the upper window.
To replace the key binding for the default split-window-vertically, you must also
unset that key and bind the keys to split-window-quietly, like this:
(global-unset-key "\C-x2")
(global-set-key "\C-x2" 'split-window-quietly)
If you load many extensions, as I do, then instead of specifying the exact location
of the extension file, as shown above, you can specify that directory as part of
Emacs’s load-path. Then, when Emacs loads a file, it will search that directory as well
as its default list of directories. (The default list is specified in paths.h when Emacs is
built.)
The following command adds your ~/emacs directory to the existing load path:
;;; Emacs Load Path
(setq load-path (cons "~/emacs" load-path))
Incidentally, load-library is an interactive interface to the load function. The
complete function looks like this:
(defun load-library (library)
"Load the Emacs Lisp library named LIBRARY.
This is an interface to the function `load'. LIBRARY is searched for in `load-path',
both with and without `load-suffixes' (as well as `load-file-rep-suffixes').

See Info node `(emacs)Lisp Libraries' for more details.

See `load-file' for a different interface to `load'."
(interactive
(list (completing-read "Load library: "
(apply-partially 'locate-file-completion-table load-path
(get-load-suffixes))))) (load library))
The name of the function, load-library, comes from the use of “library” as a
conventional synonym for “file”. The source for the load-library command is in the
files.el library.
Another interactive command that does a slightly different job is load-file. See
Section “Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs” in The GNU Emacs Manual, for information
on the distinction between load-library and this command.
210 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
16.10 Autoloading
Instead of installing a function by loading the file that contains it, or by evaluating
the function definition, you can make the function available but not actually install it
until it is first called. This is called autoloading.
When you execute an autoloaded function, Emacs automatically evaluates the file
that contains the definition, and then calls the function.
Emacs starts quicker with autoloaded functions, since their libraries are not
loaded right away; but you need to wait a moment when you first use such a
function, while its containing file is evaluated.
Rarely used functions are frequently autoloaded. The loaddefs.el library contains
thousands of autoloaded functions, from 5x5 to zone. Of course, you may come to use
a rare function frequently. When you do, you should load that function’s file with a
load expression in your .emacs file.
In my .emacs file, I load 14 libraries that contain functions that would otherwise
be autoloaded. (Actually, it would have been better to include these files in my
dumped Emacs, but I forgot. See Section “Building Emacs” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, and the INSTALL file for more about dumping.)
You may also want to include autoloaded expressions in your .emacs file. autoload
is a built-in function that takes up to five arguments, the final three of which are
optional. The first argument is the name of the function to be auSection 16.11: A
Simple Extension: line-to-top-of-window

toloaded; the second is the name of the file to be loaded. The third argument is
documentation for the function, and the fourth tells whether the function can be
called interactively. The fifth argument tells what type of object—autoload can
handle a keymap or macro as well as a function (the default is a function).
Here is a typical example:
(autoload 'html-helper-mode
"html-helper-mode" "Edit HTML documents" t)
(html-helper-mode is an older alternative to html-mode, which is a standard part of the
distribution.)
This expression autoloads the html-helper-mode function. It takes it from the html-
helper-mode.el file (or from the byte compiled version html-helpermode.elc, if that
exists.) The file must be located in a directory specified by load-path. The
documentation says that this is a mode to help you edit documents written in the
HyperText Markup Language. You can call this mode interactively by typing M-xhtml-
helper-mode. (You need to duplicate the function’s regular documentation in the
autoload expression because the regular function is not yet loaded, so its
documentation is not available.)
See Section “Autoload” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more
information.
 211
16.11 A Simple Extension: line-to-top-of-window
Here is a simple extension to Emacs that moves the line that point is on to the top of
the window. I use this all the time, to make text easier to read.
You can put the following code into a separate file and then load it from your
.emacs file, or you can include it within your .emacs file.
Here is the definition:
;;; Line to top of window;
;;; replace three keystroke sequence C-u 0 C-l
(defun line-to-top-of-window ()
"Move the line that point is on to top of window."
(interactive)
(recenter 0))
Now for the key binding.
Function keys as well as mouse button events and non-ascii characters are written
within square brackets, without quotation marks.
I bind line-to-top-of-window to my F6 function key like this:
(global-set-key [f6] 'line-to-top-of-window)
For more information, see Section “Rebinding Keys in Your Init File” in The GNU
Emacs Manual.
If you run two versions of GNU Emacs, such as versions 27 and 28, and use one
.emacs file, you can select which code to evaluate with the following conditional:
(cond
((= 27 emacs-major-version)
;; evaluate version 27 code
( ... ))
((= 28 emacs-major-version)
;; evaluate version 28 code
( ... )))
For example, recent versions blink their cursors by default. I hate such blinking, as
well as other features, so I placed the following in my .emacs file19:
(when (>= emacs-major-version 21)
(blink-cursor-mode 0)
;; Insert newline when you press 'C-n' (next-line)
;; at the end of the buffer
(setq next-line-add-newlines t)
;; Turn on image viewing (auto-image-file-mode t)
;; Turn on menu bar (this bar has text)
;; (Use numeric argument to turn on)

19 When I start instances of Emacs that do not load my .emacs file or any site file, I also
turn off blinking: emacs -q --no-site-file -eval '(blink-cursor-mode nil)'
Or nowadays, using an even more sophisticated set of options, emacs -Q

-D
212 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
(menu-bar-mode 1)
;; Turn off tool bar (this bar has icons)
;; (Use numeric argument to turn on)
(tool-bar-mode nil)
;; Turn off tooltip mode for tool bar
;; (This mode causes icon explanations to pop up)
;; (Use numeric argument to turn on)
(tooltip-mode nil)
;; If tooltips turned on, make tips appear promptly
(setq tooltip-delay 0.1) ; default is 0.7 second )
Section 16.12: X11 Colors

16.12 X11 Colors

You can specify colors when you use Emacs with the MIT X Windowing system.
I dislike the default colors and specify my own.
Here are the expressions in my .emacs file that set values:
;; Set cursor color
(set-cursor-color "white")

;; Set mouse color

(set-mouse-color "white")

;; Set foreground and background

(set-foreground-color "white")
(set-background-color "darkblue")

;;; Set highlighting colors for isearch and drag

(set-face-foreground 'highlight "white")
(set-face-background 'highlight "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'region "cyan")

(set-face-background 'region "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'secondary-selection "skyblue")

(set-face-background 'secondary-selection "darkblue")

;; Set calendar highlighting colors

(with-eval-after-load 'calendar
(set-face-foreground 'diary "skyblue")
(set-face-background 'holiday "slate blue")
(set-face-foreground 'holiday "white"))
The various shades of blue soothe my eye and prevent me from seeing the screen
flicker.
Alternatively, I could have set my specifications in various X initialization files.
For example, I could set the foreground, background, cursor, and pointer (i.e.,
mouse) colors in my ~/.Xresources file like this:
 213
Emacs*foreground: white
Emacs*background: darkblue
Emacs*cursorColor: white
Emacs*pointerColor: white
In any event, since it is not part of Emacs, I set the root color of my X window in my
~/.xinitrc file, like this20:
xsetroot -solid Navy -fg white &
16.13 Miscellaneous Settings for a .emacs File
Here are a few miscellaneous settings:

− Set the shape and color of the mouse cursor:

; Cursor shapes are defined in
; '/usr/include/X11/cursorfont.h';
; for example, the 'target' cursor is number 128; ; the
'top_left_arrow' cursor is number 132.

(let ((mpointer (x-get-resource "*mpointer"

"*emacs*mpointer")))
;; If you have not set your mouse pointer ;; then set it,
otherwise leave as is:
(if (eq mpointer nil)
(setq mpointer "132")) ; top_left_arrow
(setq x-pointer-shape (string-to-number mpointer))
(set-mouse-color "white"))
− Or you can set the values of a variety of features in an alist, like this:
(setq-default default-frame-alist
'((cursor-color . "white")
(mouse-color . "white")
(foreground-color . "white")
(background-color . "DodgerBlue4")
;; (cursor-type . bar)
(cursor-type . box)
(tool-bar-lines . 0)
(menu-bar-lines . 1)
(width . 80) (height .
58) (font .
"-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--20-200-75-75-C-100-ISO8859-1")
))
− Convert CTRL-h into DEL and DEL into CTRL-h.
(Some older keyboards needed this, although I have not seen the problem
recently.)

20 I also run more modern window managers, such as Enlightenment, Gnome, or KDE; in
those cases, I often specify an image rather than a plain color.
214 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
;; Translate 'C-h' to <DEL>. ; (keyboard-
translate ?\C-h ?\C-?)

;; Translate <DEL> to 'C-h'.

(keyboard-translate ?\C-? ?\C-h) − Turn
off a blinking cursor!
(if (fboundp 'blink-cursor-mode)
(blink-cursor-mode -1)) or start GNU Emacs with
the command emacs-nbc.
Section 16.13: Miscellaneous Settings for a .emacs File

− When using grep

‘-i’ Ignore case distinctions
‘-n’ Prefix each line of output with line number ‘-H’
Print the filename for each match.
‘-e’ Protect patterns beginning with a hyphen character, ‘-’
(setq grep-command "grep -i -nH -e ")
− Find an existing buffer, even if it has a different name This
avoids problems with symbolic links.
(setq find-file-existing-other-name t)
− Set your language environment and default input method
(set-language-environment "latin-1")
;; Remember you can enable or disable multilingual text input
;; with the toggle-input-method' (C-\) command
(setq default-input-method "latin-1-prefix")
If you want to write with Chinese GB characters, set this instead:
(set-language-environment "Chinese-GB")
(setq default-input-method "chinese-tonepy")

Fixing Unpleasant Key Bindings

Some systems bind keys unpleasantly. Sometimes, for example, the CTRL key appears
in an awkward spot rather than at the far left of the home row.
Usually, when people fix these sorts of key bindings, they do not change their
~/.emacs file. Instead, they bind the proper keys on their consoles with the loadkeys
or install-keymap commands in their boot script and then include xmodmap
commands in their .xinitrc or .Xsession file for X Windows. For a boot script:
loadkeys /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/emacs2.kmap.gz
or install-keymap emacs2
For a .xinitrc or .Xsession file when the Caps Lock key is at the far left of the home row:
# Bind the key labeled 'Caps Lock' to 'Control'
# (Such a broken user interface suggests that keyboard manufacturers
 215
# think that computers are typewriters from 1885.)

xmodmap -e "clear Lock" xmodmap -e "add

Control = Caps_Lock"
In a .xinitrc or .Xsession file, to convert an ALT key to a META key:
# Some ill designed keyboards have a key labeled ALT and no Meta xmodmap -e "keysym
Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L"
16.14 A Modified Mode Line
Finally, a feature I really like: a modified mode line.
When I work over a network, I forget which machine I am using. Also, I tend to lose
track of where I am, and which line point is on.
So I reset my mode line to look like this:
-:-- foo.texi rattlesnake:/home/bob/ Line 1 (Texinfo Fill) Top
I am visiting a file called foo.texi, on my machine rattlesnake in my /home/bob
buffer. I am on line 1, in Texinfo mode, and am at the top of the buffer.
My .emacs file has a section that looks like this:
;; Set a Mode Line that tells me which machine, which directory, ;; and which line I
am on, plus the other customary information.
(setq-default mode-line-format
(quote
(#("-" 0 1
(help-echo
"mouse-1: select window, mouse-2: delete others ...")) mode-line-
mule-info mode-line-modified
mode-line-frame-identification
" "
mode-line-buffer-identification
" "
(:eval (substring
(system-name) 0 (string-match "\\..+" (system-name))))
":"
default-directory
#(" " 0 1
(help-echo
"mouse-1: select window, mouse-2: delete others ..."))
(line-number-mode " Line %l ") global-mode-string
#(" %[(" 0 6
(help-echo
"mouse-1: select window, mouse-2: delete others ..."))
(:eval (format-time-string "%F")) mode-
line-process minor-mode-alist
#("%n" 0 2 (help-echo "mouse-2: widen" local-map (keymap ...)))
")%] "
(-3 . "%P")
216 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File
;; "-%-"
)))
Here, I redefine the default mode line. Most of the parts are from the original; but I
make a few changes. I set the default mode line format so as to permit various
modes, such as Info, to override it.
Many elements in the list are self-explanatory: mode-line-modified is a variable that
tells whether the buffer has been modified, mode-name tells the name of Section
16.14: A Modified Mode Line

the mode, and so on. However, the format looks complicated because of two features
we have not discussed.
The first string in the mode line is a dash or hyphen, ‘-’. In the old days, it would
have been specified simply as "-". But nowadays, Emacs can add properties to a
string, such as highlighting or, as in this case, a help feature. If you place your mouse
cursor over the hyphen, some help information appears (By default, you must wait
seven-tenths of a second before the information appears. You can change that timing
by changing the value of tooltip-delay.) The new string format has a special syntax:
#("-" 0 1 (help-echo "mouse-1: select window, ..."))
The #( begins a list. The first element of the list is the string itself, just one ‘-’. The
second and third elements specify the range over which the fourth element applies.
A range starts after a character, so a zero means the range starts just before the first
character; a 1 means that the range ends just after the first character. The third
element is the property for the range. It consists of a property list, a property name,
in this case, ‘help-echo’, followed by a value, in this case, a string. The second, third,
and fourth elements of this new string format can be repeated.
See Section “Text Properties” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, and see
Section “Mode Line Format” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more
information.
mode-line-buffer-identification displays the current buffer name. It is a
list beginning (#("%12b"04.... The #( begins the list.
The ‘"%12b"’ displays the current buffer name, using the buffer-name function
with which we are familiar; the ‘12’ specifies the maximum number of characters
that will be displayed. When a name has fewer characters, whitespace is added to fill
out to this number. (Buffer names can and often should be longer than 12 characters;
this length works well in a typical 80 column wide window.)
:eval says to evaluate the following form and use the result as a string to display.
In this case, the expression displays the first component of the full system name. The
end of the first component is a ‘.’ (period), so I use the string-match function to tell
me the length of the first component. The substring from the zeroth character to that
length is the name of the machine.
This is the expression:
(:eval (substring
 217
(system-name) 0 (string-match "\\..+" (system-name))))
‘%[’ and ‘%]’ cause a pair of square brackets to appear for each recursive editing
level. ‘%n’ says “Narrow” when narrowing is in effect. ‘%P’ tells you the percentage of
the buffer that is above the bottom of the window, or “Top”, “Bottom”, or “All”. (A
lower case ‘p’ tell you the percentage above the top of the window.) ‘%-’ inserts
enough dashes to fill out the line.
Remember, you don’t have to like Emacs to like it—your own Emacs can have
different colors, different commands, and different keys than a default Emacs.
On the other hand, if you want to bring up a plain out-of-the-box Emacs, with no
customization, type:
emacs -q
214 Chapter 16: Your .emacs File

This will start an Emacs that does not load your ~/.emacs initialization file. A plain,
default Emacs. Nothing more.
 219
Section 17.1: debug

17 Debugging
GNU Emacs has two debuggers, debug and edebug. The first is built into the internals
of Emacs and is always with you; the second requires that you instrument a function
before you can use it.
Both debuggers are described extensively in Section “Debugging Lisp Programs”
in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. In this chapter, I will walk through a short
example of each.

17.1 debug
Suppose you have written a function definition that is intended to return the sum of
the numbers 1 through a given number. (This is the triangle function discussed
earlier. See “Example with Decrementing Counter”, page 123, for a discussion.)
However, your function definition has a bug. You have mistyped ‘1=’ for ‘1-’.
Here is the broken definition:
(defun triangle-bugged (number)
"Return sum of numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive."
(let ((total 0))
(while (> number 0)
(setq total (+ total number))
(setq number (1= number))) ; Error here. total))
If you are reading this in Info, you can evaluate this definition in the normal
fashion. You will see triangle-bugged appear in the echo area.
Now evaluate the triangle-bugged function with an argument of 4:
(triangle-bugged 4)
This will create and enter a *Backtrace* buffer that says:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------Debugger entered--Lisp
error: (void-function 1=)
(1= number)
(setq number (1= number))
(while (> number 0) (setq total (+ total number))
(setq number (1= number)))
(let ((total 0)) (while (> number 0) (setq total ...)
(setq number ...)) total) triangle-bugged(4) eval((triangle-
bugged 4) nil) eval-expression((triangle-bugged 4) nil nil 127)
funcall-interactively(eval-expression (triangle-bugged 4) nil nil 127) call-interactively(eval-
expression nil nil) command-execute(eval-expression)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
(I have reformatted this example slightly; the debugger does not fold long lines. As
usual, you can quit the debugger by typing q in the *Backtrace* buffer.)
220 Chapter 17: Debugging
In practice, for a bug as simple as this, the Lisp error line will tell you what you
need to know to correct the definition. The function 1= is void.
However, suppose you are not quite certain what is going on? You can read the
complete backtrace.
Emacs automatically starts the debugger that puts you in the *Backtrace* buffer.
You can also start the debugger manually as described below.
Read the *Backtrace* buffer from the bottom up; it tells you what Emacs did that
led to the error. Emacs made an interactive call to C-xC-e (eval-last-sexp), which led to
the evaluation of the triangle-bugged expression. Each line above tells you what the
Lisp interpreter evaluated next.
The third line from the top of the buffer is
(setq number (1= number))
Emacs tried to evaluate this expression; in order to do so, it tried to evaluate the
inner expression shown on the second line from the top:
(1= number)
This is where the error occurred; as the top line says:
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function 1=)
You can correct the mistake, re-evaluate the function definition, and then run your
test again.

17.2 debug-on-entry
Emacs starts the debugger automatically when your function has an error.
Incidentally, you can start the debugger manually for all versions of Emacs; the
advantage is that the debugger runs even if you do not have a bug in your code.
Sometimes your code will be free of bugs!
You can enter the debugger when you call the function by calling debug-onentry.
Type:
M-x debug-on-entry RET triangle-bugged RET
Section 17.2: debug-on-entry

Now, evaluate the following:

(triangle-bugged 5)
All versions of Emacs will create a *Backtrace* buffer and tell you that it is beginning
to evaluate the triangle-bugged function:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------Debugger entered--entering
a function:
* triangle-bugged(5)eval((triangle-bugged 5) nil) eval-expression((triangle-bugged 5) nil nil
127) funcall-interactively(eval-expression (triangle-bugged 5) nil nil 127) call-
interactively(eval-expression nil nil) command-execute(eval-expression)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
 221
In the *Backtrace* buffer, type d. Emacs will evaluate the first expression in
triangle-bugged; the buffer will look like this:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Debugger entered--beginning evaluation of function call form: * (let ((total 0))
(while (> number 0) (setq total ...)
(setq number ...)) total)
* triangle-bugged(5)eval((triangle-bugged 5)) eval((triangle-bugged 5) nil) eval-
expression((triangle-bugged 5) nil nil 127) funcall-interactively(eval-expression (triangle-
bugged 5) nil nil 127) call-interactively(eval-expression nil nil) command-execute(eval-
expression)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Now, type d again, eight times, slowly. Each time you type d, Emacs will evaluate
another expression in the function definition.
Eventually, the buffer will look like this:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Debugger entered--beginning evaluation of function call form:
* (setq number (1= number))
* (while (> number 0) (setq total (+ total number))
(setq number (1= number)))
* (let ((total 0)) (while (> number 0) (setq total ...)
(setq number ...)) total)
* triangle-bugged(5)eval((triangle-bugged 5) nil)
eval-expression((triangle-bugged 5) nil nil 127) funcall-interactively(eval-expression
(triangle-bugged 5) nil nil 127) call-interactively(eval-expression nil nil) command-
execute(eval-expression)
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ----------
Finally, after you type d two more times, Emacs will reach the error, and the top two
lines of the *Backtrace* buffer will look like this:
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------Debugger entered--Lisp
error: (void-function 1=)
* (1= number) ...
---------- Buffer: *Backtrace* ---------By typing d, you were able
to step through the function.
You can quit a *Backtrace* buffer by typing q in it; this quits the trace, but does
not cancel debug-on-entry.
To cancel the effect of debug-on-entry, call cancel-debug-on-entry and the name of
the function, like this:
M-x cancel-debug-on-entry RET triangle-bugged RET
(If you are reading this in Info, cancel debug-on-entry now.)
222 Chapter 17: Debugging
17.3 debug-on-quit and (debug)
In addition to setting debug-on-error or calling debug-on-entry, there are two other
ways to start debug.
You can start debug whenever you type C-g (keyboard-quit) by setting the variable
debug-on-quit to t. This is useful for debugging infinite loops.
Or, you can insert a line that says (debug) into your code where you want the
debugger to start, like this:
(defun triangle-bugged (number)
"Return sum of numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive."
(let ((total 0))
(while (> number 0)
(setq total (+ total number))
(debug) ; Start debugger.
(setq number (1= number))) ; Error here. total))
The debug function is described in detail in Section “The Lisp Debugger” in The
GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

17.4 The edebug Source Level Debugger

Edebug is a source level debugger. Edebug normally displays the source of the code
you are debugging, with an arrow at the left that shows which line you are currently
executing.
You can walk through the execution of a function, line by line, or run quickly until
reaching a breakpoint where execution stops.
Edebug is described in Section “Edebug” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Section 17.4: The edebug Source Level Debugger

Here is a bugged function definition for triangle-recursively. See Section 11.3.4

“Recursion in place of a counter”, page 130, for a review of it.
(defun triangle-recursively-bugged (number) "Return sum of
numbers 1 through NUMBER inclusive.
Uses recursion."
(if (= number 1)
1
(+ number
(triangle-recursively-bugged
(1= number))))) ; Error here.
Normally, you would install this definition by positioning your cursor after the
function’s closing parenthesis and typing C-xC-e (eval-last-sexp) or else by positioning
your cursor within the definition and typing C-M-x (eval-defun). (By default, the eval-
defun command works only in Emacs Lisp mode or in Lisp Interaction mode.)
 223
However, to prepare this function definition for Edebug, you must first instrument
the code using a different command. You can do this by positioning your cursor
within or just after the definition and typing
M-x edebug-defun RET
This will cause Emacs to load Edebug automatically if it is not already loaded, and
properly instrument the function.
After instrumenting the function, place your cursor after the following expression
and type C-xC-e (eval-last-sexp):
(triangle-recursively-bugged 3)
You will be jumped back to the source for triangle-recursively-bugged and the cursor
positioned at the beginning of the if line of the function. Also, you will see an
arrowhead at the left hand side of that line. The arrowhead marks the line where the
function is executing. (In the following examples, we show the arrowhead with ‘=>’;
in a windowing system, you may see the arrowhead as a solid triangle in the window
fringe.)
=>?(if (= number 1)
In the example, the location of point is displayed with a star, ‘?’ (in Info, it is displayed
as ‘-!-’).
If you now press SPC, point will move to the next expression to be executed; the
line will look like this:
=>(if ?(= number 1)
As you continue to press SPC, point will move from expression to expression. At the
same time, whenever an expression returns a value, that value will be displayed in
the echo area. For example, after you move point past number, you will see the
following:
Result: 3 (#o3, #x3, ?\C-c)
This means the value of number is 3, which is octal three, hexadecimal three, and
ascii Control-C (the third letter of the alphabet, in case you need to know this
information).
You can continue moving through the code until you reach the line with the error.
Before evaluation, that line looks like this:
=> ?(1= number))))) ; Error here.
When you press SPC once again, you will produce an error message that says:
Symbol's function definition is void: 1= This is the bug.
Press q to quit Edebug.
To remove instrumentation from a function definition, simply re-evaluate it with
a command that does not instrument it. For example, you could place your cursor
after the definition’s closing parenthesis and type C-xC-e.
Edebug does a great deal more than walk with you through a function. You can
set it so it races through on its own, stopping only at an error or at specified stopping
points; you can cause it to display the changing values of various expressions; you
can find out how many times a function is called, and more.
Edebug is described in Section “Edebug” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
224 Chapter 17: Debugging
17.5 Debugging Exercises
• Install the count-words-example function and then cause it to enter the builtin
debugger when you call it. Run the command on a region containing two words.
You will need to press d a remarkable number of times. On your system, is a
hook called after the command finishes? (For information on hooks, see Section
“Command Loop Overview” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)
• Copy count-words-example into the *scratch* buffer, instrument the function for
Edebug, and walk through its execution. The function does not need to have a
bug, although you can introduce one if you wish. If the function lacks a bug, the
walk-through completes without problems.
• While running Edebug, type ? to see a list of all the Edebug commands. (The
global-edebug-prefix is usually C-xX, i.e., CTRL-x followed by an upper case X; use
this prefix for commands made outside of the Edebug debugging buffer.)
• In the Edebug debugging buffer, use the p (edebug-bounce-point) command to
see where in the region the count-words-example is working.
• Move point to some spot further down the function and then type the h
(edebug-goto-here) command to jump to that location.
• Use the t (edebug-trace-mode) command to cause Edebug to walk through the
function on its own; use an upper case T for edebug-Trace-fast-mode.
• Set a breakpoint, then run Edebug in Trace mode until it reaches the stopping
point.
18 Conclusion
We have now reached the end of this Introduction. You have now learned enough
about programming in Emacs Lisp to set values, to write simple .emacs files for
yourself and your friends, and write simple customizations and extensions to Emacs.
This is a place to stop. Or, if you wish, you can now go onward, and teach yourself.
You have learned some of the basic nuts and bolts of programming. But only
some. There are a great many more brackets and hinges that are easy to use that we
have not touched.
A path you can follow right now lies among the sources to GNU Emacs and in The
GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The Emacs Lisp sources are an adventure. When you read the sources and come
across a function or expression that is unfamiliar, you need to figure out or find out
what it does.
Go to the Reference Manual. It is a thorough, complete, and fairly easy-toread
description of Emacs Lisp. It is written not only for experts, but for people who know
what you know. (The Reference Manual comes with the standard GNU Emacs
distribution. Like this introduction, it comes as a Texinfo source file, so you can read
it on your computer and as a typeset, printed book.)
 225
Go to the other built-in help that is part of GNU Emacs: the built-in
documentation for all functions and variables, and xref-find-definitions, the program
that takes you to sources.
Here is an example of how I explore the sources. Because of its name, simple.el is
the file I looked at first, a long time ago. As it happens some of the functions in
simple.el are complicated, or at least look complicated at first sight. The open-line
function, for example, looks complicated.
You may want to walk through this function slowly, as we did with the forward-
sentence function. (See Section 12.3 “forward-sentence”, page 143.) Or you may want
to skip that function and look at another, such as split-line. You don’t need to read all
the functions. According to count-words-in-defun, the split-line function contains 102
words and symbols.
Even though it is short, split-line contains expressions we have not studied: skip-
chars-forward, indent-to, current-column and insert-and-inherit.
Consider the skip-chars-forward function. In GNU Emacs, you can find out more
about skip-chars-forward by typing C-hf (describe-function) and the name of the
function. This gives you the function documentation.
You may be able to guess what is done by a well named function such as indent-
to; or you can look it up, too. Incidentally, the describe-function function itself is in
help.el; it is one of those long, but decipherable functions. You can look up describe-
function using the C-hf command!
In this instance, since the code is Lisp, the *Help* buffer contains the name of the
library containing the function’s source. You can put point over the name of the
library and press the RET key, which in this situation is bound to help-follow, and be
taken directly to the source, in the same way as M-. (xref-find-definitions).
226
Chapter 18: Conclusion

The definition for describe-function illustrates how to customize the interactive

expression without using the standard character codes; and it shows how to create a
temporary buffer.
(The indent-to function is written in C rather than Emacs Lisp; it is a built-in
function. help-follow takes you to its source as does xref-find-definitions, when
properly set up.)
You can look at a function’s source using xref-find-definitions, which is bound to
M-. Finally, you can find out what the Reference Manual has to say by visiting the
manual in Info, and typing i (Info-index) and the name of the function, or by looking
up the function in the index to a printed copy of the manual.
Similarly, you can find out what is meant by insert-and-inherit.
Other interesting source files include paragraphs.el, loaddefs.el, and loadup.el. The
paragraphs.el file includes short, easily understood functions as well as longer ones.
The loaddefs.el file contains the many standard autoloads and many keymaps. I have
never looked at it all; only at parts. loadup.el is the file that loads the standard parts
of Emacs; it tells you a great deal about how Emacs is built. (See Section “Building
Emacs” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more about building.)
As I said, you have learned some nuts and bolts; however, and very importantly,
we have hardly touched major aspects of programming; I have said nothing about
how to sort information, except to use the predefined sort function; I have said
nothing about how to store information, except to use variables and lists; I have said
nothing about how to write programs that write programs. These are topics for
another, and different kind of book, a different kind of learning.
What you have done is learn enough for much practical work with GNU Emacs.
What you have done is get started. This is the end of a beginning.
Appendix A The the-the Function
Sometimes when you you write text, you duplicate words—as with “you you” near
the beginning of this sentence. I find that most frequently, I duplicate “the”; hence, I
call the function for detecting duplicated words, the-the.
As a first step, you could use the following regular expression to search for
duplicates:
\\(\\w+[ \t\n]+\\)\\1
This regexp matches one or more word-constituent characters followed by one or
more spaces, tabs, or newlines. However, it does not detect duplicated words on
different lines, since the ending of the first word, the end of the line, is different from
the ending of the second word, a space. (For more information about regular
expressions, see Chapter 12 “Regular Expression Searches”, page 141, as well as
Section “Syntax of Regular Expressions” in The GNU Emacs Manual, and Section
“Regular Expressions” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.)
 227
You might try searching just for duplicated word-constituent characters but that
does not work since the pattern detects doubles such as the two occurrences of “th”
in “with the”.
Another possible regexp searches for word-constituent characters followed by
non-word-constituent characters, reduplicated. Here, ‘\\w+’ matches one or more
word-constituent characters and ‘\\W*’ matches zero or more non-word-constituent
characters.
\\(\\(\\w+\\)\\W*\\)\\1 Again, not
useful.
Here is the pattern that I use. It is not perfect, but good enough. ‘\\b’ matches the
empty string, provided it is at the beginning or end of a word; ‘[^@\n\t]+’ matches
one or more occurrences of any characters that are not an @-sign, space, newline, or
tab.
\\b\\([^@ \n\t]+\\)[ \n\t]+\\1\\b
One can write more complicated expressions, but I found that this expression is
good enough, so I use it.
Here is the the-the function, as I include it in my .emacs file, along with a handy
global key binding:
(defun the-the ()
"Search forward for for a duplicated word."
(interactive)
(message "Searching for for duplicated words ...")
(push-mark)
;; This regexp is not perfect ;; but is
fairly good over all: (if (re-search-
forward
"\\b\\([^@ \n\t]+\\)[ \n\t]+\\1\\b" nil 'move)
(message "Found duplicated word.")
(message "End of buffer")))

;; Bind 'the-the' to C-c \

(global-set-key "\C-c\\" 'the-the)
Appendix A: The the-the Function

Here is test text:

one two two three four five five six
seven
You can substitute the other regular expressions shown above in the function
definition and try each of them on this list.
228 Appendix B: Handling the Kill Ring

Appendix B Handling the Kill Ring

The kill ring is a list that is transformed into a ring by the workings of the current-kill
function. The yank and yank-pop commands use the current-kill function.
This appendix describes the current-kill function as well as both the yank and the
yank-pop commands, but first, consider the workings of the kill ring.
The kill ring has a default maximum length of sixty items; this number is too large for
an explanation. Instead, set it to four. Please evaluate the following:
(setq old-kill-ring-max kill-ring-max)
(setq kill-ring-max 4)
Then, please copy each line of the following indented example into the kill ring. You may
kill each line with C-k or mark it and copy it with M-w.
(In a read-only buffer, such as the *info* buffer, the kill command, C-k (kill-line), will
not remove the text, merely copy it to the kill ring. However, your machine may beep
at you. Alternatively, for silence, you may copy the region of each line with the M-w
(kill-ring-save) command. You must mark each line for this command to succeed, but
it does not matter at which end you put point or mark.)
Please invoke the calls in order, so that five elements attempt to fill the kill ring:
first some text second
piece of text third line
fourth line of text fifth bit
of text
Then find the value of kill-ring by evaluating kill-
ring It is:
("fifth bit of text" "fourth line of text"
"third line" "second piece of text")
The first element, ‘firstsometext’, was dropped.
To return to the old value for the length of the kill ring, evaluate:
(setq kill-ring-max old-kill-ring-max)

B.1 The current-kill Function

The current-kill function changes the element in the kill ring to which kill-ring-yank-
pointer points. (Also, the kill-new function sets kill-ringyank-pointer to point to the
latest element of the kill ring. The kill-new function is used directly or indirectly by
kill-append, copy-region-as-kill, kill-ring-save, kill-line, and kill-region.)
The current-kill function is used by yank and by yank-pop. Here is the code for current-
kill:
(defun current-kill (n &optional do-not-move)
"Rotate the yanking point by N places, and then return that kill. If N is zero and
`interprogram-paste-function' is set to a function that returns a string or a list of
Section B.1: The current-kill Function 229

strings, and if that function doesn't return nil, then that string (or list) is added to the
front of the kill ring and the string (or first string in the list) is returned as the latest kill.
If N is not zero, and if `yank-pop-change-selection' is non-nil, use
`interprogram-cut-function' to transfer the kill at the new yank point into the
window system selection. If optional arg DO-NOT-MOVE is non-nil, then don't
actually move the yanking point; just return the Nth kill forward."

(let ((interprogram-paste (and (= n 0) interprogram-paste-function

(funcall interprogram-paste-function)))) (if
interprogram-paste
(progn
;; Disable the interprogram cut function when we add the new ;; text to the
kill ring, so Emacs doesn't try to own the ;; selection, with identical text.
(let ((interprogram-cut-function nil))
(if (listp interprogram-paste)
(mapc 'kill-new (nreverse interprogram-paste))
(kill-new interprogram-paste)))
(car kill-ring))
(or kill-ring (error "Kill ring is empty")) (let ((ARGth-kill-
element
(nthcdr (mod (- n (length kill-ring-yank-pointer))
(length kill-ring)) kill-ring)))
(unless do-not-move
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer ARGth-kill-element) (when (and yank-
pop-change-selection
(> n 0)
interprogram-cut-function)
(funcall interprogram-cut-function (car ARGth-kill-element))))
(car ARGth-kill-element)))))
Remember also that the kill-new function sets kill-ring-yank-pointer to the latest
element of the kill ring, which means that all the functions that call it set the value
indirectly: kill-append, copy-region-as-kill, kill-ring-save, kill-line, and kill-region.
Here is the line in kill-new, which is explained in “The kill-new function”, page 97.
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer kill-ring)
The current-kill function looks complex, but as usual, it can be understood by taking
it apart piece by piece. First look at it in skeletal form:
(defun current-kill (n &optional do-not-move)
"Rotate the yanking point by N places, and then return that kill."
(let varlist body...)
This function takes two arguments, one of which is optional. It has a documentation
string. It is not interactive.
The body of the function definition is a let expression, which itself has a body as
well as a varlist.
230 Appendix B: Handling the Kill Ring

The let expression declares a variable that will be only usable within the bounds
of this function. This variable is called interprogram-paste and is for copying to
another program. It is not for copying within this instance of GNU Emacs. Most
window systems provide a facility for interprogram pasting. Sadly, that facility
usually provides only for the last element. Most windowing systems have not
adopted a ring of many possibilities, even though Emacs has provided it for decades.
The if expression has two parts, one if there exists interprogram-paste and one if not.
Let us consider the else-part of the current-kill function. (The then-part uses the
kill-new function, which we have already described. See “The kill-new function”, page
97.)
(or kill-ring (error "Kill ring is empty")) (let ((ARGth-kill-
element
(nthcdr (mod (- n (length kill-ring-yank-pointer))
(length kill-ring)) kill-
ring))) (or do-not-move
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer ARGth-kill-element))
(car ARGth-kill-element))
The code first checks whether the kill ring has content; otherwise it signals an error.
Note that the or expression is very similar to testing length with an if:
(if (zerop (length kill-ring)) ; if-part
(error "Kill ring is empty")) ; then-part
;; No else-part
If there is not anything in the kill ring, its length must be zero and an error message
sent to the user: ‘Killringisempty’. The current-kill function uses an or expression which
is simpler. But an if expression reminds us what goes on.
This if expression uses the function zerop which returns true if the value it is
testing is zero. When zerop tests true, the then-part of the if is evaluated. The then-
part is a list starting with the function error, which is a function that is similar to the
message function (see Section 1.8.5 “The message Function”, page 14) in that it prints
a one-line message in the echo area. However, in addition to printing a message,
error also stops evaluation of the function within which it is embedded. This means
that the rest of the function will not be evaluated if the length of the kill ring is zero.
Then the current-kill function selects the element to return. The selection depends
on the number of places that current-kill rotates and on where kill-ringyank-pointer
points.
Next, either the optional do-not-move argument is true or the current value of kill-
ring-yank-pointer is set to point to the list. Finally, another expression returns the first
element of the list even if the do-not-move argument is true.
In my opinion, it is slightly misleading, at least to humans, to use the term “error”
as the name of the error function. A better term would be “cancel”. Strictly speaking,
of course, you cannot point to, much less rotate a pointer to a list that has no length,
so from the point of view of the computer, the word “error” is correct. But a human
Section B.1: The current-kill Function 231

expects to attempt this sort of thing, if only to find out whether the kill ring is full or
empty. This is an act of exploration.
From the human point of view, the act of exploration and discovery is not
necessarily an error, and therefore should not be labeled as one, even in the bowels
of a computer. As it is, the code in Emacs implies that a human who is acting
virtuously, by exploring his or her environment, is making an error. This is bad. Even
though the computer takes the same steps as it does when there is an error, a term
such as “cancel” would have a clearer connotation.
Among other actions, the else-part of the if expression sets the value of kill-ring-
yank-pointer to ARGth-kill-element when the kill ring has something in it and the
value of do-not-move is nil.
The code looks like this:
(nthcdr (mod (- n (length kill-ring-yank-pointer))
(length kill-ring)) kill-ring)))
This needs some examination. Unless it is not supposed to move the pointer, the
current-kill function changes where kill-ring-yank-pointer points. That is what the
(setqkill-ring-yank-pointerARGth-kill-element)) expression does. Also, clearly, ARGth-
kill-element is being set to be equal to some cdr of the kill ring, using the nthcdr
function that is described in an earlier section. (See Section 8.3 “copy-region-as-kill”,
page 93.) How does it do this?
As we have seen before (see Section 7.3 “nthcdr”, page 80), the nthcdr function
works by repeatedly taking the cdr of a list—it takes the cdr of the cdr of the cdr . . .
The two following expressions produce the same result:
(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer (cdr kill-ring))

(setq kill-ring-yank-pointer (nthcdr 1 kill-ring))

However, the nthcdr expression is more complicated. It uses the mod function to
determine which cdr to select.
(You will remember to look at inner functions first; indeed, we will have to go inside
the mod.)
The mod function returns the value of its first argument modulo the second; that
is to say, it returns the remainder after dividing the first argument by the second.
The value returned has the same sign as the second argument.
Thus,
(mod 12 4)
⇒ 0 ;; because there is no remainder
(mod 13 4)
⇒1
In this case, the first argument is often smaller than the second. That is fine.
(mod 0 4)
⇒0
(mod 1 4)
232 Appendix B: Handling the Kill Ring

⇒1
We can guess what the - function does. It is like + but subtracts instead of adds;
the - function subtracts its second argument from its first. Also, we already know
what the length function does (see Section 7.2.1 “length”, page 79). It returns the
length of a list.
And n is the name of the required argument to the current-kill function.
So when the first argument to nthcdr is zero, the nthcdr expression returns the whole
list, as you can see by evaluating the following:
;; kill-ring-yank-pointer and kill-ring have a length of four
;; and (mod (- 0 4) 4) ⇒ 0
(nthcdr (mod (- 0 4) 4)
'("fourth line of text"
"third line"
"second piece of text"
"first some text"))
When the first argument to the current-kill function is one, the nthcdr expression
returns the list without its first element.
(nthcdr (mod (- 1 4) 4)
'("fourth line of text"
"third line"
"second piece of text"
"first some text"))
Incidentally, both kill-ring and kill-ring-yank-pointer are global variables. That
means that any expression in Emacs Lisp can access them. They are not like the local
variables set by let or like the symbols in an argument list. Local variables can only
be accessed within the let that defines them or the function that specifies them in an
argument list (and within expressions called by them).
(See Section 3.5 “let Prevents Confusion”, page 32, and Section 3.1 “The defun Macro”,
page 26.)

B.2 yank
After learning about current-kill, the code for the yank function is almost easy.
The yank function does not use the kill-ring-yank-pointer variable directly. It calls
insert-for-yank which calls current-kill which sets the kill-ringyank-pointer variable.
The code looks like this:
(defun yank (&optional arg)
"Reinsert (\"paste\") the last stretch of killed text. More precisely, reinsert the stretch of
killed text most recently killed OR yanked. Put point at end, and set mark at beginning. With
just \\[universal-argument] as argument, same but put point at beginning (and mark at end).
With argument N, reinsert the Nth most recently killed stretch of killed text.
Section B.1: The current-kill Function 233

When this command inserts killed text into the buffer, it honors `yank-excluded-
properties' and `yank-handler' as described in the doc string for `insert-for-yank-1',
which see.

See also the command `yank-pop' (\\[yank-pop])."

(interactive "*P")
(setq yank-window-start (window-start))
;; If we don't get all the way thru, make last-command indicate that ;; for the following
command.
(setq this-command t)
(push-mark (point))
(insert-for-yank (current-kill (cond
((listp arg) 0)
((eq arg '-) -2)
(t (1- arg)))))
(if (consp arg)
;; This is like exchange-point-and-mark, but doesn't activate the mark. ;; It is cleaner to
avoid activation, even though the command ;; loop would deactivate the mark because we
inserted text. (goto-char (prog1 (mark t)
(set-marker (mark-marker) (point) (current-buffer))))) ;; If we do get
all the way thru, make this-command indicate that. (if (eq this-command t)
(setq this-command 'yank)) nil)
The key expression is insert-for-yank, which inserts the string returned by current-kill,
but removes some text properties from it.
However, before getting to that expression, the function sets the value of yank-
window-start to the position returned by the (window-start) expression, the position
at which the display currently starts. The yank function also sets this-command and
pushes the mark.
234 Appendix B: Handling the Kill Ring
Section B.3: yank-pop

After it yanks the appropriate element, if the optional argument is a cons rather
than a number or nothing, it puts point at beginning of the yanked text and mark at
its end.
(The prog1 function is like progn but returns the value of its first argument rather
than the value of its last argument. Its first argument is forced to return the buffer’s
mark as an integer. You can see the documentation for these functions by placing
point over them in this buffer and then typing C-hf (describe-function) followed by a
RET; the default is the function.)
The last part of the function tells what to do when it succeeds.

B.3 yank-pop
After understanding yank and current-kill, you know how to approach the yank-pop
function. Leaving out the documentation to save space, it looks like this:
(defun yank-pop (&optional arg)
"..."
(interactive "*p")
(if (not (eq last-command 'yank))
(error "Previous command was not a yank"))
(setq this-command 'yank) (unless arg
(setq arg 1))
(let ((inhibit-read-only t)
(before (< (point) (mark t)))) (if before
(funcall (or yank-undo-function 'delete-region) (point) (mark t))
(funcall (or yank-undo-function 'delete-region) (mark t) (point)))
(setq yank-undo-function nil)
(set-marker (mark-marker) (point) (current-buffer))
(insert-for-yank (current-kill arg))
;; Set the window start back where it was in the yank command, ;; if possible.
(set-window-start (selected-window) yank-window-start t) (if before
;; This is like exchange-point-and-mark, ;; but doesn't
activate the mark.
;; It is cleaner to avoid activation, even though the command ;; loop would
deactivate the mark because we inserted text. (goto-char (prog1 (mark t)
(set-marker (mark-marker)
(point)
(current-buffer))))))
nil)
The function is interactive with a small ‘p’ so the prefix argument is processed
and passed to the function. The command can only be used after a previous yank;
otherwise an error message is sent. This check uses the variable last-command which
 235
is set by yank and is discussed elsewhere. (See Section 8.3 “copy-region-as-kill”, page
93.)
The let clause sets the variable before to true or false depending whether point is
before or after mark and then the region between point and mark is deleted. This is
the region that was just inserted by the previous yank and it is this text that will be
replaced.
funcall calls its first argument as a function, passing remaining arguments to it.
The first argument is whatever the or expression returns. The two remaining
arguments are the positions of point and mark set by the preceding yank command.
There is more, but that is the hardest part.

B.4 The ring.el File

Interestingly, GNU Emacs possesses a file called ring.el that provides many of the
features we just discussed. But functions such as kill-ring-yank-pointer do not use this
library, possibly because they were written earlier.
236 Appendix B: Handling the Kill Ring
Appendix C A Graph with Labeled Axes
Printed axes help you understand a graph. They convey scale. In an earlier chapter
(see Chapter 15 “Readying a Graph”, page 187), we wrote the code to print the body
of a graph. Here we write the code for printing and labeling vertical and horizontal
axes, along with the body itself.
Since insertions fill a buffer to the right and below point, the new graph printing
function should first print the Y or vertical axis, then the body of the graph, and
finally the X or horizontal axis. This sequence lays out for us the contents of the
function:
1. Set up code.
2. Print Y axis.
3. Print body of graph.
4. Print X axis.
Here is an example of how a finished graph should look:
10 -
*
* *
* **
* ***
5- * *******
* *** *******
*************
***************
1 - ****************
| | | |
1 5 10 15
In this graph, both the vertical and the horizontal axes are labeled with numbers.
However, in some graphs, the horizontal axis is time and would be better labeled
with months, like this:
5- *
* ** *
*******
********** **
1 - **************
| ^ |
Jan June Jan
Indeed, with a little thought, we can easily come up with a variety of vertical and
horizontal labeling schemes. Our task could become complicated. But complications
breed confusion. Rather than permit this, it is better choose a simple labeling
scheme for our first effort, and to modify or replace it later.
Section C.2: The print-Y-axis Function 237

These considerations suggest the following outline for the print-graph function:
(defun print-graph (numbers-list)
"documentation..." (let
((height ...
...))
(print-Y-axis height ... )
(graph-body-print numbers-list)
(print-X-axis ... )))
We can work on each part of the print-graph function definition in turn.

C.1 The print-graph Varlist

In writing the print-graph function, the first task is to write the varlist in the let
expression. (We will leave aside for the moment any thoughts about making the
function interactive or about the contents of its documentation string.)
The varlist should set several values. Clearly, the top of the label for the vertical
axis must be at least the height of the graph, which means that we must obtain this
information here. Note that the print-graph-body function also requires this
information. There is no reason to calculate the height of the graph in two different
places, so we should change print-graph-body from the way we defined it earlier to
take advantage of the calculation.
Similarly, both the function for printing the X axis labels and the print-graphbody
function need to learn the value of the width of each symbol. We can perform the
calculation here and change the definition for print-graph-body from the way we
defined it in the previous chapter.
The length of the label for the horizontal axis must be at least as long as the
graph. However, this information is used only in the function that prints the
horizontal axis, so it does not need to be calculated here.
These thoughts lead us directly to the following form for the varlist in the let for
print-graph:
(let ((height (apply 'max numbers-list)) ; First version.
(symbol-width (length graph-blank))) As we
shall see, this expression is not quite right.

C.2 The print-Y-axis Function

The job of the print-Y-axis function is to print a label for the vertical axis that looks
like this:
10 -

5-
238 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

1-
The function should be passed the height of the graph, and then should construct
and insert the appropriate numbers and marks.
It is easy enough to see in the figure what the Y axis label should look like; but to
say in words, and then to write a function definition to do the job is another matter.
It is not quite true to say that we want a number and a tic every five lines: there are
only three lines between the ‘1’ and the ‘5’ (lines 2, 3, and 4), but four lines between
the ‘5’ and the ‘10’ (lines 6, 7, 8, and 9). It is better to say that we want a number and
a tic mark on the base line (number 1) and then that we want a number and a tic on
the fifth line from the bottom and on every line that is a multiple of five.
The next issue is what height the label should be? Suppose the maximum height
of tallest column of the graph is seven. Should the highest label on the Y axis be ‘5 -’,
and should the graph stick up above the label? Or should the highest label be ‘ 7-’, and
mark the peak of the graph? Or should the highest label be 10-, which is a multiple of
five, and be higher than the topmost value of the graph?
The latter form is preferred. Most graphs are drawn within rectangles whose
sides are an integral number of steps long—5, 10, 15, and so on for a step distance of
five. But as soon as we decide to use a step height for the vertical axis, we discover
that the simple expression in the varlist for computing the height is wrong. The
expression is (apply'maxnumbers-list). This returns the precise height, not the
maximum height plus whatever is necessary to round up to the nearest multiple of
five. A more complex expression is required.
As usual in cases like this, a complex problem becomes simpler if it is divided
into several smaller problems.
First, consider the case when the highest value of the graph is an integral
multiple of five—when it is 5, 10, 15, or some higher multiple of five. We can use this
value as the Y axis height.
A fairly simply way to determine whether a number is a multiple of five is to
divide it by five and see if the division results in a remainder. If there is no remainder,
the number is a multiple of five. Thus, seven divided by five has a remainder of two,
and seven is not an integral multiple of five. Put in slightly different language, more
reminiscent of the classroom, five goes into seven once, with a remainder of two.
However, five goes into ten twice, with no remainder: ten is an integral multiple of
five.

C.2.1 Side Trip: Compute a Remainder

In Lisp, the function for computing a remainder is %. The function returns the
remainder of its first argument divided by its second argument. As it happens, % is a
function in Emacs Lisp that you cannot discover using apropos: you find nothing if
you type M-xaproposRETremainderRET. The only way to learn of the existence of % is
to read about it in a book such as this or in the Emacs Lisp sources.
You can try the % function by evaluating the following two expressions:
Section C.2: The print-Y-axis Function 239

(% 7 5)

(% 10 5)
The first expression returns 2 and the second expression returns 0.
To test whether the returned value is zero or some other number, we can use the
zerop function. This function returns t if its argument, which must be a number, is
zero.
(zerop (% 7 5)) ⇒ nil

(zerop (% 10 5))
⇒t
Thus, the following expression will return t if the height of the graph is evenly
divisible by five:
(zerop (% height 5))
(The value of height, of course, can be found from (apply'maxnumbers-list).)
On the other hand, if the value of height is not a multiple of five, we want to reset
the value to the next higher multiple of five. This is straightforward arithmetic using
functions with which we are already familiar. First, we divide the value of height by
five to determine how many times five goes into the number. Thus, five goes into
twelve twice. If we add one to this quotient and multiply by five, we will obtain the
value of the next multiple of five that is larger than the height. Five goes into twelve
twice. Add one to two, and multiply by five; the result is fifteen, which is the next
multiple of five that is higher than twelve. The Lisp expression for this is:
(* (1+ (/ height 5)) 5)
For example, if you evaluate the following, the result is 15:
(* (1+ (/ 12 5)) 5)
All through this discussion, we have been using 5 as the value for spacing labels
on the Y axis; but we may want to use some other value. For generality, we should
replace 5 with a variable to which we can assign a value. The best name I can think
of for this variable is Y-axis-label-spacing.
Using this term, and an if expression, we produce the following:
(if (zerop (% height Y-axis-label-spacing)) height
;; else
(* (1+ (/ height Y-axis-label-spacing)) Y-axis-label-spacing))
This expression returns the value of height itself if the height is an even multiple of
the value of the Y-axis-label-spacing or else it computes and returns a value of height
that is equal to the next higher multiple of the value of the Y-axis-labelspacing.
We can now include this expression in the let expression of the print-graph
function (after first setting the value of Y-axis-label-spacing):
(defvar Y-axis-label-spacing 5
"Number of lines from one Y axis label to next.")
240 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

...
(let* ((height (apply 'max numbers-list))
(height-of-top-line
(if (zerop (% height Y-axis-label-spacing)) height
;; else
(* (1+ (/ height Y-axis-label-spacing)) Y-axis-label-
spacing))) (symbol-width (length graph-blank)))) ...
(Note use of the let* function: the initial value of height is computed once by the
(apply'maxnumbers-list) expression and then the resulting value of height is used to
compute its final value. See “The let* expression”, page 148, for more about let*.)

C.2.2 Construct a Y Axis Element

When we print the vertical axis, we want to insert strings such as ‘5-’ and ‘10- ’ every
five lines. Moreover, we want the numbers and dashes to line up, so shorter numbers
must be padded with leading spaces. If some of the strings use two digit numbers,
the strings with single digit numbers must include a leading blank space before the
number.
To figure out the length of the number, the length function is used. But the length
function works only with a string, not with a number. So the number has to be
converted from being a number to being a string. This is done with the number-to-
string function. For example,
(length (number-to-string 35))
⇒2

(length (number-to-string 100))

⇒3
(number-to-string is also called int-to-string; you will see this alternative name in
various sources.)
In addition, in each label, each number is followed by a string such as ‘ - ’, which
we will call the Y-axis-tic marker. This variable is defined with defvar:
(defvar Y-axis-tic " - "
"String that follows number in a Y axis label.")
The length of the Y label is the sum of the length of the Y axis tic mark and the
length of the number of the top of the graph.
(length (concat (number-to-string height) Y-axis-tic)))

This value will be calculated by the print-graph function in its varlist as full-Y-label-
width and passed on. (Note that we did not think to include this in the varlist when
we first proposed it.)
To make a complete vertical axis label, a tic mark is concatenated with a number;
and the two together may be preceded by one or more spaces depending on how
long the number is. The label consists of three parts: the (optional) leading spaces,
Section C.2: The print-Y-axis Function 241

the number, and the tic mark. The function is passed the value of the number for the
specific row, and the value of the width of the top line, which is calculated (just once)
by print-graph.
(defun Y-axis-element (number full-Y-label-width) "Construct a NUMBERed
label element.
A numbered element looks like this ` 5 - ', and is padded
as needed so all line up with the element for the largest
number." (let* ((leading-spaces
(- full-Y-label-width
(length
(concat (number-to-string number) Y-axis-tic)))))
(concat
(make-string leading-spaces ? )
(number-to-string number) Y-axis-tic)))

The Y-axis-element function concatenates together the leading spaces, if any; the
number, as a string; and the tic mark.
To figure out how many leading spaces the label will need, the function subtracts
the actual length of the label—the length of the number plus the length of the tic
mark—from the desired label width.
Blank spaces are inserted using the make-string function. This function takes two
arguments: the first tells it how long the string will be and the second is a symbol for
the character to insert, in a special format. The format is a question mark followed
by a blank space, like this, ‘? ’. See Section “Character Type” in The GNU Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, for a description of the syntax for characters.
(Of course, you might want to replace the blank space by some other character . . .
You know what to do.)
The number-to-string function is used in the concatenation expression, to convert
the number to a string that is concatenated with the leading spaces and the tic mark.
C.2.3 Create a Y Axis Column
The preceding functions provide all the tools needed to construct a function that
generates a list of numbered and blank strings to insert as the label for the vertical
axis:
(defun Y-axis-column (height width-of-label) "Construct list of Y axis
labels and blank strings.
For HEIGHT of line above base and WIDTH-OF-LABEL."
(let (Y-axis)

(while (> height 1)

(if (zerop (% height Y-axis-label-spacing)) ;; Insert label.
(setq Y-axis
(cons
(Y-axis-element height width-of-label) Y-axis))
242 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

;; Else, insert blanks.

(setq Y-axis
(cons
(make-string width-of-label ? ) Y-axis)))
(setq height (1- height))) ;; Insert
base line.
(setq Y-axis
(cons (Y-axis-element 1 width-of-label) Y-axis))
(nreverse Y-axis)))
In this function, we start with the value of height and repetitively subtract one
from its value. After each subtraction, we test to see whether the value is an integral
multiple of the Y-axis-label-spacing. If it is, we construct a numbered label using the Y-
axis-element function; if not, we construct a blank label using the make-string
function. The base line consists of the number one followed by a tic mark.
C.2.4 The Not Quite Final Version of print-Y-axis
The list constructed by the Y-axis-column function is passed to the print-Y-axis
function, which inserts the list as a column.
(defun print-Y-axis (height full-Y-label-width)
"Insert Y axis using HEIGHT and FULL-Y-LABEL-WIDTH.
Height must be the maximum height of the graph.
Full width is the width of the highest label element." ;; Value of
height and full-Y-label-width ;; are passed by print-graph.
(let ((start (point)))
(insert-rectangle
(Y-axis-column height full-Y-label-width)) ;; Place point
ready for inserting graph.
(goto-char start)
;; Move point forward by value of full-Y-label-width
(forward-char full-Y-label-width)))
The print-Y-axis uses the insert-rectangle function to insert the Y axis labels
created by the Y-axis-column function. In addition, it places point at the correct
position for printing the body of the graph.
You can test print-Y-axis:
1. Install
Y-axis-label-spacing
Y-axis-tic
Y-axis-element Y-axis-column
print-Y-axis
2. Copy the following expression:
(print-Y-axis 12 5)

3. Switch to the *scratch* buffer and place the cursor where you want the axis
labels to start.
Section C.2: The print-Y-axis Function 243

4. Type M-: (eval-expression).

5. Yank the graph-body-print expression into the minibuffer with C-y (yank).
6. Press RET to evaluate the expression.
Emacs will print labels vertically, the top one being ‘10- ’. (The print-graph
function will pass the value of height-of-top-line, which in this case will end up as 15,
thereby getting rid of what might appear as a bug.)
244 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes
Section C.3: The print-X-axis

C.3 The print-X-axis Function

X axis labels are much like Y axis labels, except that the ticks are on a line above the
numbers. Labels should look like this:
| | | |
1 5 10 15
The first tic is under the first column of the graph and is preceded by several
blank spaces. These spaces provide room in rows above for the Y axis labels. The
second, third, fourth, and subsequent ticks are all spaced equally, according to the
value of X-axis-label-spacing.
The second row of the X axis consists of numbers, preceded by several blank
spaces and also separated according to the value of the variable X-axis-labelspacing.
The value of the variable X-axis-label-spacing should itself be measured in units of
symbol-width, since you may want to change the width of the symbols that you are
using to print the body of the graph without changing the ways the graph is labeled.
The print-X-axis function is constructed in more or less the same fashion as the
print-Y-axis function except that it has two lines: the line of tic marks and the
numbers. We will write a separate function to print each line and then combine them
within the print-X-axis function.
This is a three step process:
1. Write a function to print the X axis tic marks, print-X-axis-tic-line.
2. Write a function to print the X numbers, print-X-axis-numbered-line.
3. Write a function to print both lines, the print-X-axis function, using print-X-axis-
tic-line and print-X-axis-numbered-line.

C.3.1 X Axis Tic Marks

The first function should print the X axis tic marks. We must specify the tic marks
themselves and their spacing:
(defvar X-axis-label-spacing (if (boundp
'graph-blank)
(* 5 (length graph-blank)) 5)
"Number of units from one X axis label to next.")
(Note that the value of graph-blank is set by another defvar. The boundp predicate
checks whether it has already been set; boundp returns nil if it has not. If graph-blank
were unbound and we did not use this conditional construction, we would enter the
debugger and see an error message saying
‘Debuggerentered--Lisperror:(void-variablegraph-blank)’.)
Here is the defvar for X-axis-tic-symbol:
(defvar X-axis-tic-symbol "|"
 Function 245
"String to insert to point to a column in X axis.") The goal is to
make a line that looks like this:
| | | |
The first tic is indented so that it is under the first column, which is indented to
provide space for the Y axis labels.
A tic element consists of the blank spaces that stretch from one tic to the next
plus a tic symbol. The number of blanks is determined by the width of the tic symbol
and the X-axis-label-spacing.
The code looks like this:
;;; X-axis-tic-element ...
(concat
(make-string
;; Make a string of blanks.
(- (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing)
(length X-axis-tic-symbol))
?)
;; Concatenate blanks with tic symbol.
X-axis-tic-symbol) ...
Next, we determine how many blanks are needed to indent the first tic mark to
the first column of the graph. This uses the value of full-Y-label-width passed it by the
print-graph function.
The code to make X-axis-leading-spaces looks like this:
;; X-axis-leading-spaces ...
(make-string full-Y-label-width ? ) ...
We also need to determine the length of the horizontal axis, which is the length of
the numbers list, and the number of ticks in the horizontal axis:
;; X-length ...
(length numbers-list)

;; tic-width ...
(* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing)

;; number-of-X-ticks
(if (zerop (% (X-length tic-width)))
(/ (X-length tic-width))
(1+ (/ (X-length tic-width))))
Section C.3: The print-X-axis

All this leads us directly to the function for printing the X axis tic line:
(defun print-X-axis-tic-line
(number-of-X-tics X-axis-leading-spaces X-axis-tic-element)
"Print ticks for X axis."
(insert X-axis-leading-spaces)
(insert X-axis-tic-symbol) ; Under first column.
;; Insert second tic in the right spot.
246 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes
(insert (concat
(make-string
(- (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing) ;; Insert white
space up to second tic symbol.
(* 2 (length X-axis-tic-symbol)))
?)
X-axis-tic-symbol)) ;; Insert
remaining ticks.
(while (> number-of-X-tics 1)
(insert X-axis-tic-element)
(setq number-of-X-tics (1- number-of-X-tics)))) The line of
numbers is equally straightforward:
 Function 247
First, we create a numbered element with blank spaces before each number:
(defun X-axis-element (number)
"Construct a numbered X axis element." (let ((leading-
spaces
(- (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing)
(length (number-to-string number))))) (concat (make-
string leading-spaces ? )
(number-to-string number))))
Next, we create the function to print the numbered line, starting with the number
1 under the first column:
(defun print-X-axis-numbered-line
(number-of-X-tics X-axis-leading-spaces)
"Print line of X-axis numbers"
(let ((number X-axis-label-spacing))
(insert X-axis-leading-spaces)
(insert "1")
(insert (concat
(make-string
;; Insert white space up to next number.
(- (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing) 2)
?)
(number-to-string number))) ;; Insert
remaining numbers.
(setq number (+ number X-axis-label-spacing))
(while (> number-of-X-tics 1)
(insert (X-axis-element number))
(setq number (+ number X-axis-label-spacing))
(setq number-of-X-tics (1- number-of-X-tics)))))

Finally, we need to write the print-X-axis that uses print-X-axis-tic-line and print-X-
axis-numbered-line.
The function must determine the local values of the variables used by both print-
X-axis-tic-line and print-X-axis-numbered-line, and then it must call them. Also, it must
print the carriage return that separates the two lines.
The function consists of a varlist that specifies five local variables, and calls to
each of the two line printing functions:
(defun print-X-axis (numbers-list)
"Print X axis labels to length of NUMBERS-LIST."
(let* ((leading-spaces
(make-string full-Y-label-width ? ))
;; symbol-width is provided by graph-body-print
(tic-width (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing))
(X-length (length numbers-list))
(X-tic
(concat
248 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes
(make-string
;; Make a string of blanks.
(- (* symbol-width X-axis-label-spacing)
(length X-axis-tic-symbol))
?)
Section C.4: Printing the Whole Graph 249

;; Concatenate blanks with tic symbol.

X-axis-tic-symbol))
(tic-number
(if (zerop (% X-length tic-width))
(/ X-length tic-width)
(1+ (/ X-length tic-width)))))
(print-X-axis-tic-line tic-number leading-spaces X-tic)
(insert "\n")
(print-X-axis-numbered-line tic-number leading-spaces))) You can test
print-X-axis:
1. Install X-axis-tic-symbol, X-axis-label-spacing, print-X-axis-ticline, as well as X-axis-
element, print-X-axis-numbered-line, and print-X-axis.
2. Copy the following expression:
(progn
(let ((full-Y-label-width 5)
(symbol-width 1))
(print-X-axis
'(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16))))
3. Switch to the *scratch* buffer and place the cursor where you want the axis
labels to start.
4. Type M-: (eval-expression).
5. Yank the test expression into the minibuffer with C-y (yank).
6. Press RET to evaluate the expression.
Emacs will print the horizontal axis like this:

| | | | |
1 5 10 15 20

C.4 Printing the Whole Graph

Now we are nearly ready to print the whole graph.
The function to print the graph with the proper labels follows the outline we
created earlier (see Appendix C “A Graph with Labeled Axes”, page 233), but with
additions.
Here is the outline:
(defun print-graph (numbers-list)
"documentation..." (let
((height ...
...))
(print-Y-axis height ... )
(graph-body-print numbers-list)
(print-X-axis ... )))
250 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

The final version is different from what we planned in two ways: first, it contains
additional values calculated once in the varlist; second, it carries an option to specify
the labels’ increment per row. This latter feature turns out to be essential; otherwise,
a graph may have more rows than fit on a display or on a sheet of paper.
This new feature requires a change to the Y-axis-column function, to add vertical-
step to it. The function looks like this:
;;; Final version.
(defun Y-axis-column
(height width-of-label &optional vertical-step) "Construct list of labels for
Y axis.
HEIGHT is maximum height of graph.
WIDTH-OF-LABEL is maximum width of label. VERTICAL-STEP, an
option, is a positive integer that specifies how much a Y axis
label increments for each line. For example, a step of 5 means
that each line is five units of the graph."
(let (Y-axis
(number-per-line (or vertical-step 1)))
(while (> height 1)
(if (zerop (% height Y-axis-label-spacing)) ;; Insert label.
(setq Y-axis
(cons
(Y-axis-element
(* height number-per-line)
width-of-label) Y-axis)) ;; Else, insert blanks.
(setq Y-axis
(cons
(make-string width-of-label ? ) Y-axis)))
(setq height (1- height))) ;; Insert
base line.
(setq Y-axis (cons (Y-axis-element (or vertical-step
1) width-of-label)
Y-axis))
(nreverse Y-axis)))
The values for the maximum height of graph and the width of a symbol are
computed by print-graph in its let expression; so graph-body-print must be changed to
accept them.
;;; Final version.
(defun graph-body-print (numbers-list height symbol-width) "Print a bar graph of
the NUMBERS-LIST.
The numbers-list consists of the Y-axis values.
HEIGHT is maximum height of graph.
SYMBOL-WIDTH is number of each column."
(let (from-position)
Section C.4: Printing the Whole Graph 251

(while numbers-list
(setq from-position (point))
(insert-rectangle
(column-of-graph height (car numbers-list)))
(goto-char from-position)
(forward-char symbol-width)
;; Draw graph column by column.
(sit-for 0)
(setq numbers-list (cdr numbers-list))) ;; Place point
for X axis labels.
(forward-line height)
(insert "\n")))
Finally, the code for the print-graph function:
;;; Final version.
(defun print-graph
(numbers-list &optional vertical-step)
"Print labeled bar graph of the NUMBERS-LIST. The numbers-
list consists of the Y-axis values.

Optionally, VERTICAL-STEP, a positive integer, specifies how much

a Y axis label increments for each line. For example, a step of 5
means that each row is five units."
(let* ((symbol-width (length graph-blank)) ;; height is
both the largest number ;; and the number
with the most digits.
(height (apply 'max numbers-list))
(height-of-top-line
(if (zerop (% height Y-axis-label-spacing)) height
;; else
(* (1+ (/ height Y-axis-label-spacing)) Y-axis-label-spacing)))
(vertical-step (or vertical-step 1))
(full-Y-label-width
(length
(concat
(number-to-string
(* height-of-top-line vertical-step)) Y-axis-tic))))

(print-Y-axis height-of-top-line full-Y-label-width vertical-step)

(graph-body-print numbers-list height-of-top-line symbol-
width)
(print-X-axis numbers-list)))

C.4.1 Testing print-graph

We can test the print-graph function with a short list of numbers:
252 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

1. Install the final versions of Y-axis-column, graph-body-print, and print-graph (in

addition to the rest of the code.) 2. Copy the following expression:
(print-graph '(3 2 5 6 7 5 3 4 6 4 3 2 1))

3. Switch to the *scratch* buffer and place the cursor where you want the axis
labels to start.
4. Type M-: (eval-expression).
5. Yank the test expression into the minibuffer with C-y (yank).
6. Press RET to evaluate the expression.
Emacs will print a graph that looks like this:
10 -

*
** *
5- **** *
**** ***
* *********
************
2 - *************

| | | |
1 5 10 15
On the other hand, if you pass print-graph a vertical-step value of 2, by evaluating
this expression:
(print-graph '(3 2 5 6 7 5 3 4 6 4 3 2 1) 2)
The graph looks like this:
20 -

*
** *
10 - **** *
**** ***
* *********
************
3 - *************

| | | |
1 5 10 15
(A question: is the ‘2’ on the bottom of the vertical axis a bug or a feature? If you
think it is a bug, and should be a ‘1’ instead, (or even a ‘0’), you can modify the
sources.)
Section C.4: Printing the Whole Graph 253

C.4.2 Graphing Numbers of Words and Symbols

Now for the graph for which all this code was written: a graph that shows how many
function definitions contain fewer than 10 words and symbols, how many contain
between 10 and 19 words and symbols, how many contain between 20 and 29
words and symbols, and so on.
This is a multi-step process. First make sure you have loaded all the requisite
code.
It is a good idea to reset the value of top-of-ranges in case you have set it to some
different value. You can evaluate the following:
(setq top-of-ranges
'(10 20 30 40 50
60 70 80 90 100
110 120 130 140 150
160 170 180 190 200
210 220 230 240 250
260 270 280 290 300)
Next create a list of the number of words and symbols in each range.
Evaluate the following:
(setq list-for-graph
(defuns-per-range
(sort
(recursive-lengths-list-many-files
(directory-files "/usr/local/emacs/lisp" t ".+el$"))
'<) top-of-ranges))
On my old machine, this took about an hour. It looked though 303 Lisp files in my
copy of Emacs version 19.23. After all that computing, the list-for-graph had this
value:
(537 1027 955 785 594 483 349 292 224 199 166 120 116 99
90 80 67 48 52 45 41 33 28 26 25 20 12 28 11 13 220)
This means that my copy of Emacs had 537 function definitions with fewer than 10
words or symbols in them, 1,027 function definitions with 10 to 19 words or
symbols in them, 955 function definitions with 20 to 29 words or symbols in them,
and so on.
Clearly, just by looking at this list we can see that most function definitions
contain ten to thirty words and symbols.
Now for printing. We do not want to print a graph that is 1,030 lines high . . .
Instead, we should print a graph that is fewer than twenty-five lines high. A graph
that height can be displayed on almost any monitor, and easily printed on a sheet of
paper.
This means that each value in list-for-graph must be reduced to one-fiftieth its
present value.
Here is a short function to do just that, using two functions we have not yet seen,
mapcar and lambda.
254 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

(defun one-fiftieth (full-range)

"Return list, each number one-fiftieth of previous."
(mapcar (lambda (arg) (/ arg 50)) full-range))

C.4.3 A lambda Expression: Useful Anonymity

lambda is the symbol for an anonymous function, a function without a name. Every
time you use an anonymous function, you need to include its whole body.
Thus,
(lambda (arg) (/ arg 50)) is a function that returns the value resulting from dividing
whatever is passed to it as arg by 50.
Earlier, for example, we had a function multiply-by-seven; it multiplied its
argument by 7. This function is similar, except it divides its argument by 50; and, it
has no name. The anonymous equivalent of multiply-by-seven is:
(lambda (number) (* 7 number)) (See Section 3.1
“The defun Macro”, page 26.) If we want to
multiply 3 by 7, we can write:

(multiply-by-seven 3)

function argument

This expression returns 21.

Similarly, we can write:

((lambda (number) (* 7 number)) 3)

anonymous function argument

If we want to divide 100 by 50, we can write:

((lambda (arg) (/ arg 50)) 100)

anonymous function argument

Section C.4: Printing the Whole Graph 255

This expression returns 2. The 100 is passed to the function, which divides that
number by 50.
See Section “Lambda Expressions” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for
more about lambda. Lisp and lambda expressions derive from the Lambda
Calculus.

C.4.4 The mapcar Function

mapcar is a function that calls its first argument with each element of its second
argument, in turn. The second argument must be a sequence.
The ‘map’ part of the name comes from the mathematical phrase, “mapping over
a domain”, meaning to apply a function to each of the elements in a domain. The
mathematical phrase is based on the metaphor of a surveyor walking, one step at a
time, over an area he is mapping. And ‘car’, of course, comes from the Lisp notion of
the first of a list. For example,
(mapcar '1+ '(2 4 6))
⇒ (3 5 7)
The function 1+ which adds one to its argument, is executed on each element of the
list, and a new list is returned.
Contrast this with apply, which applies its first argument to all the remaining.
(See Chapter 15 “Readying a Graph”, page 187, for an explanation of apply.)
In the definition of one-fiftieth, the first argument is the anonymous function:
(lambda (arg) (/ arg 50)) and the second argument is full-range, which will be bound
to list-for-graph.
The whole expression looks like this:
(mapcar (lambda (arg) (/ arg 50)) full-range))
See Section “Mapping Functions” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for
more about mapcar.
Using the one-fiftieth function, we can generate a list in which each element is
one-fiftieth the size of the corresponding element in list-for-graph.
(setq fiftieth-list-for-graph
(one-fiftieth list-for-graph)) The resulting
list looks like this:
(10 20 19 15 11 9 6 5 4 3 3 2 2
1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4)
This, we are almost ready to print! (We also notice the loss of information: many of
the higher ranges are 0, meaning that fewer than 50 defuns had that many words or
symbols—but not necessarily meaning that none had that many words or symbols.)
256 Appendix C: A Graph with Labeled Axes

C.4.5 Another Bug . . . Most Insidious

I said “almost ready to print”! Of course, there is a bug in the print-graph function . . .
It has a vertical-step option, but not a horizontal-step option. The top-of-range scale
goes from 10 to 300 by tens. But the print-graph function will print only by ones.
This is a classic example of what some consider the most insidious type of bug,
the bug of omission. This is not the kind of bug you can find by studying the code, for
it is not in the code; it is an omitted feature. Your best actions are to try your
program early and often; and try to arrange, as much as you can, to write code that is
easy to understand and easy to change. Try to be aware, whenever you can, that
whatever you have written, will be rewritten, if not soon, eventually. A hard maxim
to follow.
It is the print-X-axis-numbered-line function that needs the work; and then the
print-X-axis and the print-graph functions need to be adapted. Not much needs to be
done; there is one nicety: the numbers ought to line up under the tic marks. This
takes a little thought.
Here is the corrected print-X-axis-numbered-line:
(defun print-X-axis-numbered-line
(number-of-X-tics X-axis-leading-spaces
&optional horizontal-step)
"Print line of X-axis numbers"
(let ((number X-axis-label-spacing)
(horizontal-step (or horizontal-step 1)))
(insert X-axis-leading-spaces) ;; Delete
extra leading spaces.
(delete-char (- (1-
(length (number-to-string horizontal-step))))) (insert (concat
(make-string ;; Insert
white space.
(- (* symbol-width
X-axis-label-spacing)
(1-
(length
(number-to-string horizontal-step)))
2)
?)
(number-to-string
(* number horizontal-step)))) ;; Insert
remaining numbers.
(setq number (+ number X-axis-label-spacing))
(while (> number-of-X-tics 1) (insert (X-axis-
element
(* number horizontal-step)))
(setq number (+ number X-axis-label-spacing))
Section C.4: Printing the Whole Graph 257

(setq number-of-X-tics (1- number-of-X-tics)))))

If you are reading this in Info, you can see the new versions of print-X-axis print-
graph and evaluate them. If you are reading this in a printed book, you can see the
changed lines here (the full text is too much to print).
(defun print-X-axis (numbers-list horizontal-step) ...
(print-X-axis-numbered-line tic-number leading-spaces
horizontal-step))
(defun print-graph
(numbers-list
&optional vertical-step horizontal-step) ...
(print-X-axis numbers-list horizontal-step))
C.4.6 The Printed Graph
When made and installed, you can call the print-graph command like this:

(print-graph fiftieth-list-for-graph 50 10)

Here is the graph:

1000 - *
**
**
**
**
750 - ***
***
***
***
****
500 - *****
******
******
******
*******
250 - ********
********* *
*********** *
************* *
50 - ***************** * *
| | | | | | | |
10 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

The largest group of functions contain 10–19 words and symbols each.
258
Appendix D: Free Software and Free Manuals

Appendix D Free Software and Free Manuals

by Richard M. Stallman

The biggest deficiency in free operating systems is not in the software—it is the
lack of good free manuals that we can include in these systems. Many of our most
important programs do not come with full manuals. Documentation is an essential
part of any software package; when an important free software package does not
come with a free manual, that is a major gap. We have many such gaps today.
Once upon a time, many years ago, I thought I would learn Perl. I got a copy of a
free manual, but I found it hard to read. When I asked Perl users about alternatives,
they told me that there were better introductory manuals—but those were not free.
Why was this? The authors of the good manuals had written them for O’Reilly
Associates, which published them with restrictive terms—no copying, no
modification, source files not available—which exclude them from the free software
community.
That wasn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, and (to our
community’s great loss) it was far from the last. Proprietary manual publishers have
enticed a great many authors to restrict their manuals since then. Many times I have
heard a GNU user eagerly tell me about a manual that he is writing, with which he
expects to help the GNU project—and then had my hopes dashed, as he proceeded to
explain that he had signed a contract with a publisher that would restrict it so that
we cannot use it.
Given that writing good English is a rare skill among programmers, we can ill
afford to lose manuals this way.
Free documentation, like free software, is a matter of freedom, not price. The
problem with these manuals was not that O’Reilly Associates charged a price for
printed copies—that in itself is fine. The Free Software Foundation sells printed
copies (https://shop.fsf.org) of free GNU manuals (https://www.gnu.org/
doc/doc.html), too. But GNU manuals are available in source code form, while these
manuals are available only on paper. GNU manuals come with permission to copy
and modify; the Perl manuals do not. These restrictions are the problems.
The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software: it is
a matter of giving all users certain freedoms. Redistribution (including commercial
redistribution) must be permitted, so that the manual can accompany every copy of
the program, on-line or on paper. Permission for modification is crucial too.
As a general rule, I don’t believe that it is essential for people to have permission
to modify all sorts of articles and books. The issues for writings are not necessarily
the same as those for software. For example, I don’t think you or I are obliged to give
permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our
views.
 259
But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for
documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the
software, and add or change its features, if they are conscientious they will change
the manual too—so they can provide accurate and usable documentation with the
modified program. A manual which forbids programmers to be conscientious and
finish the job, or more precisely requires them to write a new manual from scratch if
they change the program, does not fill our community’s needs.
While a blanket prohibition on modification is unacceptable, some kinds of limits
on the method of modification pose no problem. For example, requirements to
preserve the original author’s copyright notice, the distribution terms, or the list of
authors, are ok. It is also no problem to require modified versions to include notice
that they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be deleted or
changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical topics. (Some GNU
manuals have them.)
These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because, as a practical matter, they
don’t stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit the
modified program. In other words, they don’t block the free software community
from making full use of the manual.
However, it must be possible to modify all the technical content of the manual,
and then distribute the result in all the usual media, through all the usual channels;
otherwise, the restrictions do block the community, the manual is not free, and so we
need another manual.
Unfortunately, it is often hard to find someone to write another manual when a
proprietary manual exists. The obstacle is that many users think that a proprietary
manual is good enough—so they don’t see the need to write a free manual. They do
not see that the free operating system has a gap that needs filling.
Why do users think that proprietary manuals are good enough? Some have not
considered the issue. I hope this article will do something to change that.
Other users consider proprietary manuals acceptable for the same reason so
many people consider proprietary software acceptable: they judge in purely
practical terms, not using freedom as a criterion. These people are entitled to their
opinions, but since those opinions spring from values which do not include freedom,
they are no guide for those of us who do value freedom.
Please spread the word about this issue. We continue to lose manuals to
proprietary publishing. If we spread the word that proprietary manuals are not
sufficient, perhaps the next person who wants to help GNU by writing
documentation will realize, before it is too late, that he must above all make it free.
We can also encourage commercial publishers to sell free, copylefted manuals
instead of proprietary ones. One way you can help this is to check the distribution
terms of a manual before you buy it, and prefer copylefted manuals to non-
copylefted ones.

Note: The Free Software Foundation maintains a page on its Web site that lists free
books available from other publishers:
260 Appendix E: GNU Free Documentation License
https://www.gnu.org/doc/other-free-books.html
Appendix E GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
https://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of

this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional
and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the
effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it,
either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves
for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being
considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the
document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU
General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software,
because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come
with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this
License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work,
regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We
recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or
reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the
terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license,
unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The
“Document”, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the
public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy,
modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright
law.
A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the
Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications
and/or translated into another language.
A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the
Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or
authors of the Document to the Document’s overall subject (or to related
matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall
subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a
Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could
 261
be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or
of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are
designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the
Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above
definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The
Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not
identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as
FrontCover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document
is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and
a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public,
that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text
editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for
drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input
to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable
for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file
format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or
discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image
format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that
is not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII
without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTEX input format, SGML or XML using
a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or
PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats
include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can
be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for
which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the
machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word
processors for output purposes only.
The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such
following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires
to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title
page as such, “Title Page” means the text near the most prominent appearance
of the work’s title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the
Document to the public.
A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title
either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that
translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section
name mentioned below, such as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”,
262 Appendix E: GNU Free Documentation License
“Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve the Title” of such a section when
you modify the Document means that it remains a section “Entitled XYZ”
according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which
states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers
are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards
disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers
may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially
or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the
license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all
copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this
License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading
or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may
accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough
number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may
publicly display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed
covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s
license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that
carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front
cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly
and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must
present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible.
You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes
limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and
satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you
should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover,
and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more
than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along
with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a
computernetwork location from which the general network-using public has
access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete
Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter
option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of
Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain
thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
 263
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of
that edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document
well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to
provide you with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the
conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified
Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role
of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified
Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things
in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from thatof
the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there
were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use
the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version
gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities respon-
sible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together
with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its
principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from
this requirement.
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
Version,as the publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent tothe
other copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice givingthe
public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this
License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and re-
quired Cover Texts given in the Document’s license notice. H. Include an
unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add toit an
item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the
Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled
“History” in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and
publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item
describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
publicaccess to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the
network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was
based on. These may be placed in the “History” section. You may omit a
network location for a work that was published at least four years before
264 Appendix E: GNU Free Documentation License
the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to
gives permission.
K. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”,
Preservethe Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the
substance
and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications
given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in theirtext
and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered
part of the section titles.
M. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not
beincluded in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or
toconflict in title with any Invariant Section. O. Preserve any Warranty
Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that
qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the
Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as
invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the
Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other
section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing
but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example,
statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an
organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage
of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in
the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-
Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one
entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover,
previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are
acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one,
on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give
permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply
endorsement of any Modified Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions,
provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all
of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of
your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their
Warranty Disclaimers.
 265
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple
identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are
multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make
the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses,
the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a
unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of
Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the
various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise
combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled
“Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in
the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection,
provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each
of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into
the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding
verbatim copying of that document.
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution
medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation
is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the
individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this
License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not
themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the
Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate,
the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the
Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the
Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers
that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant
Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright
holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in
addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a
translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any
Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English
266 Appendix E: GNU Free Documentation License
version of this License and the original versions of those notices and
disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original
version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will
prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or
“History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will
typically require changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense, or distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights
under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a
particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the
copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b)
permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some
reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated
permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some
reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of
this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the
violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of
parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights
have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or
all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it. 10. FUTURE
REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new
problems or concerns. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any
later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been
published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document
does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version
ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this
License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version
permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
11. RELICENSING
 267
“Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World
Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides
prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody
can edit is an example of such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration”
(or “MMC”) contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus
published on the MMC site.
“CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license
published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a
principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft
versions of that license published by that same organization.
“Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as
part of another Document.
An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all
works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this
MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had
no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to
November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under
CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC
is eligible for relicensing.
268 Appendix E: GNU Free Documentation License
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in
the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title
page:
Copyright (C) year your name.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the
Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-
Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
Documentation License''.
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the
“with. . .Texts.” line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with the Front-Cover Texts being
list, and with the Back-Cover Texts being list.
If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of
the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend
releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such
as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
269

Index A
Accumulate, type of recursive
pattern................... 135 add-hook.............................
% 201 and.............................. 101, 149 Anonymous
% (remainder function) ............... 235 function ................. 249 apostrophe for
quoting.................. 3 append-to-buffer.....................
52 apply ................................ 189
apropos.............................. 187 Argument as local
’ variable ........... 124
' for quoting ........................... 3 ‘argument’ defined..................... 11 ‘argumentlist’
defined ............... 27 Argument, wrong type of
.............. 13 Arguments ............................ 11
Arguments’ data types................. 12
( Arguments, variable number of ........ 13
(debug) in code...................... 218 Asterisk for read-only buffer ........... 61 Auto
Fill mode turned on ............ 201
autoload............................. 206 Automatic mode
selection ............ 200 Axis, print
*
horizontal................. 241
* (multiplication)...................... 27 * for read-
Axis, print vertical ................... 234
only buffer.................. 61 *scratch* buffer
..................... 117

B
beginning-of-buffer ................. 65 ‘bind’ defined
. ......................... 16 Binding, dynamic......................
.emacs file ........................... 196 36 Binding, lexical........................ 36 Bindings,
.emacs file, beginning of.............. 199 key, fixing unpleasant....... 211
‘body’ defined ......................... 26 Body of
graph........................ 187
Buffer size............................. 24 Buffer, history of
/ word................. 21 buffer-file-name..................... 20
/ (division)............................ 69 buffer-menu, bound to key........... 204 buffer-
name .......................... 20 Bug, most insidious
type ............. 251 Building robots.......................
< 127
Byte compiling ......................... 7
<= (less than or equal)................ 120

>
> (greater than) ....................... 38
270 Index

C ................................. 26 defvar............................... 104

C language primitives ................. 26 C, a defvar for a user
digression into................... 102 ‘call’ defined customizable variable............... 105 defvar
......................... 24 cancel-debug-on-entry.............. with an asterisk .............. 105 delete-and-
218 car, introduced........................ 77 cdr, extract-region ......... 102 Deleting text
introduced........................ 77 Changing a .......................... 85 describe-function ................... 50
function definition......... 29 describe-function, introduced........ 48
Chest of Drawers, metaphor for a symbol Digression into C..................... 102 directory-
....................... 111 Clipping text.......................... 85 files..................... 179 Division............................... 69
Code installation ...................... 32 dolist............................... 125
‘command’ defined...................... 20 dotimes.............................. 126 dotted
Comments in Lisp code................ 29 Common pair........................... 110
Lisp .......................... 3 compare- Drawers, Chest of, metaphor for a symbol
windows..................... 203 concat ................................ ....................... 111 Duplicated words
12 cond ................................. 132 condition- function............ 223
case....................... 91 Dynamic binding ...................... 36
Conditional ’twixt two versions of Emacs
.................. 208 Conditional with if ................... 37
cons cell.............................. 110 cons, introduced E
...................... 78 copy-region-as-kill ................. 93
edebug............................... 218
copy-to-buffer....................... 59 Count words
Else................................... 40 Emacs version,
recursively .............. 161 count-words-example
choosing .............. 208 ‘emptylist’ defined
................ 155 count-words-in-defun............... 171
.................... 2 ‘emptystring’ defined................. 46
Counting.............................. 17 Counting words in
eobp ................................. 151
a defun....... 167, 169 curly
eq..................................... 46 eq (example of
quotes........................... 86 current-
use).................... 95 equal ................................. 46
buffer....................... 22 current-kill ........................
Erasing text........................... 85 error
225 curved quotes ......................... 86
................................ 227 Error for symbol without
Customizing your .emacs file ......... 196
function ..... 10
Cutting and storing text............... 85
Error for symbol without value ........ 10 Error
message generation ............... 4 ‘evaluate’
D defined...................... 3
Data types ............................ 12 debug Evaluating inner lists ................... 8
................................ 215 debug-on- Evaluation.............................. 8
entry...................... 216 debug-on-quit....................... Evaluation practice.................... 20 Every, type
of recursive pattern....... 133
218 debugging............................ 215 default.el
Example variable, fill-column........ 10
init file................... 196 defconst.............................
‘expression’ defined.................... 2
199 defcustom............................ 197 Deferment
in recursion ............... 136 F
Definition installation ................. 28 Falsehood and truth in Emacs Lisp .... 41 FDL,
Definition writing ..................... 26 GNU Free
Definition, how to change.............. 29 Documentation License............. 256 files-in-
defsubst............................. 199 defun below-directory .......... 179 fill-column, an
example variable ..... 10 filter-buffer-
 271

substring............. 95 Find a File........................... Function Definition ........... 28 Install code

173 Find function documentation .......... 48 permanently............... 32 interactive
Find source of function ................ 48 .......................... 29 ‘interactivefunction’ defined
Flowers in a field ....................... 1 Focusing ....... 20
attention (narrowing) ........ 73 Interactive functions................... 29 Interactive
‘form’ defined .......................... 2 Formatting options..................... 31 interactive, example use
convention................. 55 Formatting help of .......... 61 Interpreter, Lisp, explained .............
........................ 3 forward-paragraph .................. 147 4
forward-sentence ................... 143 ‘function’ Interpreter, what it does................ 6
defined...................... 5 ‘functiondefinition’
defined......... 26 Function definition
installation......... 28 Function definition
K
writing............. 26 Function definition, how to Keep, type of recursive pattern ....... 135
change..... 29 Key bindings, fixing .................. 211
Functions, primitive ................... 26 Key setting globally .................. 203
Key unbinding ....................... 203
Keymaps............................. 204
Keyword .............................. 66
G Kill ring handling .................... 225 Kill ring
Generate an error message.............. 4 Getting a overview .................... 113 kill-append
buffer ....................... 22 .......................... 95 kill-new.............................. 97 kill-
Global set key........................ 203 ‘globalvariable’ region .......................... 89
defined ............ 229 global-set-key...................... Killing text............................ 85
203 global-unset-key ................... 203 Graph
prototype ..................... 187 Graph, printing all
................... 245 graph-body-print ................... 192
L
graph-body-print Final version. ..... 246 lambda............................... 249 length
................................ 79 lengths-list-file ..................
174 lengths-list-many-files ........... 176
let.................................... 33 let expression sample
H ................. 34 let expression, parts of................ 34
Handling the kill ring................. 225 Help let variables uninitialized ............. 35
typing lists........................ 3 let*.............................. 56, 148 Lexical
Horizontal axis printing .............. 241 binding........................ 36 Library, as term for
I “file”.............. 48 line-to-top-of-window..............
if..................................... 37 ‘if-part’ 207 Lisp Atoms............................. 1 Lisp history
defined...................... 38 indent-tabs-mode ............................ 3
................... 202 Indentation for Lisp interpreter, explained .............. 4 Lisp
formatting............. 55 interpreter, what it does ........... 6 Lisp Lists
Initialization file...................... 196 .............................. 1 Lisp macro ............................ 93
Initializing a variable................. 104 Inner list list-buffers, rebound............... 204 Lists in a
evaluation .................... 8 insert-buffer computer................... 108 load-library
........................ 60 insert-buffer, new version ........................ 206 load-path............................ 205
body ..... 65 insert-buffer-substring............. 52 Loading files ......................... 205 ‘localvariable’
Insidious type of bug ................. 251 Install a defined .............. 33 Local variables list, per-
272 Index

buffer,........ 200 Location of point...................... Pasting text.......................... 113

24 looking-at .......................... 151 Patterns, searching for................ 141
Loops................................ 115 Per-buffer, local variables list ......... 200
Loops and recursion.................. 115 Permanent code installation ........... 32 point
................................. 42 Point and buffer
preservation .......... 42
M ‘point’ defined ........................ 24
Maclisp................................. 3 Macro, lisp Point location ......................... 24
............................ 93 Mail aliases .......................... Practicing evaluation .................. 20
202 make-string ......................... 238 ‘predicate’ defined.................... 14
mapcar............................... 250 mark Preserving point and buffer............ 42
.................................. 42 mark-whole-buffer Primitive functions .................... 26
................... 50 match-beginning..................... 152 Primitives written in C ................ 26
max .................................. 189 Print horizontal axis.................. 241 Print
message............................... 14 min vertical axis .................... 234 print-elements-of-
.................................. 189 Mode line list............. 117 print-elements-recursively........
format..................... 212 Mode selection, 129 print-graph Final version. ........... 247 print-
automatic............ 200 mode-line-format graph varlist .................. 234 print-X-axis
................... 212 ........................ 244 print-X-axis-numbered-
Motion by sentence and paragraph.... 141 line........ 244 print-X-axis-tic-line.............. 243
print-Y-axis ........................ 240 Printing the
whole graph ............. 245 progn
N ................................. 88 Program, running one
Narrowing............................. 73 ‘narrowing’ .................. 3 Properties, in mode line example
defined.................... 25 new version body for ..... 213
insert-buffer... 65 nil.................................... 41 nil, Properties, mention of buffer-substring-no-
history of word ................... 21 No deferment properties .. 76 Prototype graph......................
solution ................ 137 nreverse............................. 187 push, example........................ 100
184 nth.................................... 81 nthcdr
............................ 80, 93 nthcdr,
example...................... 100 number-to-string Q
................... 237 quote .................................. 3 quoting using
apostrophe ............... 3
O
occur ................................ 203 R
optional.............................. 66 Optional re-search-forward .................. 142 Read-only
arguments ................... 66 Options for buffer....................... 61 Readying a graph
interactive .............. 31 or..................................... 63 .................... 187
other-buffer ......................... 22 Rebinding keys....................... 204
Recursion ............................ 127
Recursion and loops.................. 115
P Recursion without Deferments........ 136
Paragraphs, movement by ............ 141 Parts of Recursive Definition Parts............ 128
a Recursive Definition........ 128 Recursive pattern - accumulate ....... 135
Parts of let expression ................ 34 Recursive pattern - every............. 133
Passing information to functions....... 11
 273

Recursive pattern - keep.............. 135 switch-to-buffer..................... 23 Switching to a

Recursive Patterns ................... 133 recursive- buffer .................. 23
count-words.............. 166 recursive-graph-body- Symbol names.......................... 6 Symbol without
print........ 194 recursive-lengths-list- function error......... 10
many-files ........................ 177 Recursively Symbol without value error............ 10
counting words........... 161 regexp-quote Symbolic expressions, introduced........ 2
........................ 149 Region, what it is ..................... Symbols as a Chest of Drawers ....... 111
42 Regular expression searches........... 141 Syntax categories and tables.......... 168
Regular expressions for word
counting...................... 155 Remainder function,
%................ 235 T
Repetition (loops).................... 115 Tabs, preventing ..................... 202
Repetition for word counting ......... 155 Text between double quotation marks... 2
Retrieving text....................... 113 ‘returnedvalue’ Text Mode turned on................. 201 Text
explained ............. 8 reverse.............................. 184 retrieval......................... 113 the-
Ring, making a list like a............. 225 ring.el file the.............................. 223 ‘then-part’
.......................... 232 Robots, building ..................... defined.................... 38 top-of-ranges.......................
127 183 triangle-bugged..................... 215 triangle-
Run a program ......................... 3 recursively............... 130 Truth and falsehood in
Emacs Lisp .... 41
Types of data ......................... 12
S
Sample let expression................. 34 save-
excursion....................... 42 save- U
restriction..................... 73 search- Unbinding key........................ 203
forward....................... 87 Searches, illustrating Uninitialized let variables............. 35
................. 141 sentence-end ........................ 141
Sentences, movement by.............. 141
V
set.................................... 16 set-buffer
Variable initialization................. 104 Variable
........................... 23 set-variable ........................ 105
number of arguments ......... 13 Variable,
setcar ................................ 82 setcdr
example of, fill-column..... 10
................................ 83 setcdr, example......................
‘variable,global’, defined .......... 229
100 Setting a key globally ................ 203
‘variable,local’, defined............. 33
Setting value of variable ............... 16
Variable, setting value ................. 16 Variables
‘sideeffect’ defined................... 8 Simple
............................... 9
extension in .emacs file ....... 207 simplified-
‘varlist’ defined...................... 34
beginning-of-buffer .... 49 site-init.el init file
Version of Emacs, choosing ........... 208
................ 196 site-load.el init file ................ 196
Vertical axis printing ................. 234
Size of buffer .......................... 24 Solution
without deferment........... 137 sort W
................................. 179 Source level what-line............................. 74 while
debugger................. 218 ................................ 115 Whitespace in lists
Special form............................ 7 Storing and ..................... 2 Whole graph printing.................
cutting text ............... 85 ‘string’ defined 245
........................ 2 substring.............................. 12
274 Index

Widening.............................. 73 Widening,
example of.................. 74 Word counting in a
defun ............ 167
Words and symbols in defun.......... 167
Words, counted recursively ........... 161
Words, duplicated.................... 223
Writing a function definition........... 26
Wrong type of argument............... 13

X
X axis printing ....................... 241
X-axis-element...................... 244
Y
Y axis printing ....................... 234
Y-axis-column....................... 239 Y-axis-column
Final version.......... 246
Y-axis-label-spacing............... 237 Y-axis-tic
.......................... 238 yank............................. 113, 230
yank-pop............................. 231

Z
zap-to-char .......................... 85 zerop
................................ 227
 About the Author

Robert J. Chassell (1946–2017) started working with GNU Emacs in 1985.

He wrote and edited, taught Emacs and Emacs Lisp, and spoke throughout
the world on software freedom. Chassell was a founding Director and
Treasurer of the Free Software Foundation, Inc. He was co-author of the
Texinfo manual, and edited more than a dozen other books. He graduated
from Cambridge University, in England. He had an abiding interest in
social and economic history and flew his own airplane.
"Goodbye to Bob Chassell" (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ goodbye-to-
bob-chassell)