These macros all sound more complicated than necessary -- on the first 
one, I've sent you a message with sneek:

;; By: Maxime Devos

;; This does not recurse into #(...).
;; Also, such a construct does not nest well, you can't put a replace-result-placeholder inside a replace-result-placeholder meaningfully,
;; so I'm wondering why you're doing this, maybe your goal can be accomplished more robustly with a different method.
(eval-when (expand load eval)
   (define (replace-placeholder new code) ; <--- recursively transforms code to replace '<?>' by new
     (syntax-case code (<?>)
       (<?> new)
       ((x . y)
        #`(#,(replace-placeholder new #'x) . #,(replace-placeholder new #'y)))
       (rest #'rest))))

(define-syntax replace-result-placeholder
   (lambda (s)
     (syntax-case s (<?>) ; <?>: placeholder
       ((_ new code) (replace-placeholder #'new #'code)))))

(display (replace-result-placeholder
            quote
            (<?> bar))) ; -> bar

(I think thinking in terms of 'operations' and special-casing lambda etc 
would make things harder here)

As a bonus, this supports things like `((x . <?>) (z . w)) which aren't 
supported by the original macro as that macro assumed lists.

Greetings,
Maxime.