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From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Interpretation of Unadorned Identifiers
Message-ID: <2684@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Sep-84 03:46:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.2684
Posted: Tue Sep 11 03:46:27 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Sep-84 10:29:24 EDT
References: <78@rlgvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 20

In article <78@rlgvax.UUCP> jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh) writes:
>If I
>remember correctly, Lisp treats one as a self-quoting constant.
>Lisp example:
>	(foo bar (bletch))
>In each example, the interpretation is to call bletch, then call
>foo with "bar" as its first argument, and the value returned from
>bletch is its second.

You remember incorrectly.  In Lisp, symbols are generally variables
whose values are referenced.  Special forms or macros can be used to
prevent variable evaluation, as in (setq foo bar), in which foo is
quoted, but bar is evaluated.  To get what you thought the above form
produced you would have to say (foo 'bar (bletch)), which is shorthand
for (foo (quote bar) (bletch)).  Note that in Lisp your question is not
so simple; the semantics of a form are dependent upon the context.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar