When to use ' (or quote) in Lisp?
After making it through the major parts of an introductory Lisp book, I still couldn't understand what the special operator (quote) (or equivalent ' ) function does, yet this has been all over Lisp code that I've seen. What does it do? Mikael Jansson Short answer Bypass the default evaluation rules and do not evaluate the expression (symbol or s-exp), passing it along to the function exactly as typed. Long Answer: The Default Evaluation Rule When a regular (I'll come to that later) function is invoked, all arguments passed to it are evaluated. This means you can write this: (* (+ a 2) 3) Which