Re: expanding the article window

["Steven E. Harris" <seh@panix.com>]

dbast0s@yahoo.com.br (Daniel C. Bastos) writes:

> What's the difference between ?\+ and [(w)]. I suppose the second is
> an array of lists? But what about the '?' in the first? What does it
> do?

The first one is an atom -- a character -- while the second is an array
(or vector) composed of one list with one symbol.

See the Lisp Reference Section 8.4.3 for a discussion of the syntax for
denoting characters; that's where the question mark and backslash come
from. It's analogous to the "#\" ("sharpsign backslash") read macro in
Common Lisp, though the backslash isn't always necessary in Emacs Lisp.

For the vector, see the Lisp Reference Section 8.4.9. The read syntax
automatically quotes the values, so it's not necessary to quote the "w"
symbol above. This syntax is similar to the "#nA" ("sharpsign A") read
macro in Common Lisp, where the vector above can be written "#1A((w))".

-- 
Steven E. Harris