Re: Basic Emacs Lisp question

[tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:

> tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca> writes:
>
>> Matthias Pfeifer <pfemat@web.de> writes:
>>
>>> What is the difference between
>>>
>>> (list 0 nil -1)
>>>
>>> and
>>>
>>> '(0 nil -1)
>>>
>>
>> In this instance, nothing. However, ...

> Are you sure there is no difference? In many lisp dialects, the second
> form is more like a constant and cannot be modified in a reliable
> manner - IIRC this is due to how memory is allocated for the
> quoted form. In the first one, memory is allocated dynamically and so
> can be safely modified. 
>

Ah, thanks. Reading over the other posts in this thread, I can see how
this distinction could lead to some hard-to-detect bugs. At least,
they'd be hard for me to detect.

Tyler

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