Programming in Emacs Lisp

An Introduction

Edition 1.05, 21 October 1997

by Robert J. Chassell


(1)

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 `to make clear, prove'; thus it came to mean, by one thread of derivation, `the evidence offered as proof', which is to say, `the information offered', which led to its meaning in Lisp. 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.)

(2)

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.


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