From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: bolega Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: identity function with an echo side effect Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:56:30 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <324e9d4c-b083-42a3-aa88-4e7b918042e3@h32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291860520 13261 80.91.229.12 (9 Dec 2010 02:08:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 02:08:40 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 09 03:08:35 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PQVvu-0002TI-4I for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:08:34 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:33103 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQVvt-0007Sk-Gv for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:08:33 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!h32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help, comp.emacs, comp.emacs.xemacs, gnu.emacs, comp.lang.lisp Original-Lines: 24 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.31.65.240 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1281473790 20130 127.0.0.1 (10 Aug 2010 20:56:30 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:56:30 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: h32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.31.65.240; posting-account=REkl4woAAABFXaU7nL79XtGpnmNCQ415 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6,gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:180558 comp.emacs:100328 comp.emacs.xemacs:82485 comp.lang.lisp:291083 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:76446 Archived-At: After searching google groups and emacs apropos extensively, I could not find a function, perhaps I am missing one that can return identically return its argument and has a small side effect of echoing the argument in some place such as for example the mini buffer or the point at which C-x C-e is typed. For example, calling this function "echo" , usage would look like this : (cdr ( echo (cdr (echo (cdr (echo '(a b c d))))))) echo: '(a b c d) or (a b c d) (I am not sure which would be appropriate) (b c d) (c d) result: (d) Is there a need for quotes to prevent evaluation of alphabets at any phase ? Thanks.