Re: elisp from CL transition guide

[Tamas Papp <tkpapp@gmail.com>]

daniel@bigwalter.net (Daniel Jensen) writes:

> Tamas Papp <tkpapp@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I have some Common Lisp programming experience, and would like to use
>> Emacs Lisp for simple tasks.  I found introductions to Elisp, but what
>> I am looking for is some guide that would tell me the differences from
>> CL, to get started quicker.
>
> I don't think that many of the differences between Emacs Lisp and Common
> Lisp will come up while you're getting started. My advice is to take on
> those simple tasks right now and learn by doing. The Emacs Lisp
> Introduction is an excellent tutorial. It will teach you how to think
> about writing Emacs commands. I think that's what you should focus on.
> There is also plenty of source code to read and learn from.

One thing I don't understand yet is namespaces in Elisp: if I set fill-column in
a buffer (setq fill-column 80), that doesn't seem to affect fill-column in other
buffers.  But if I set some other variable eg (setq foo 12), foo will evaluate
to 12 in other buffers.  What would be a correct mental model for this?

Thanks

Tamas