From: Brad Settlemyer
Subject: list equivalence in elisp
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 17:27:00 +0000
Message-ID: <E3bF8.472$Md6.24736@news1.east.cox.net>

Hello,
  I'm back for more help.  First why aren't the 2 following expressions 
equivalent:

'("\\<\\(false\\|true\\)\\>" . font-lock-constant-face)

(list (concat "\\<\\(" c++-literals "\\)\\>") '(. font-lock-constant-face))

Assume c++-literals is a variable containing the contents of the original.  
Second, how do I fix the second expression to be the equivalent of the 
first.  Finally, what does that dot mean, I've tried looking in the 
hyperspec, but no luck, I think it just acts as a kind of wildcard 
placeholder, but I'm unsure. 

Thanks
-- 
Brad Settlemyer
http://deepcopy.org/
Progamming in the trenches

From: Coby Beck
Subject: Re: list equivalence in elisp
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 17:38:04 +0000
Message-ID: <0ebF8.90086$xS2.7158719@news1.calgary.shaw.ca>

Brad Settlemyer <···········@deepcopy.org> wrote in message
························@news1.east.cox.net...
> Hello,
>   I'm back for more help.  First why aren't the 2 following expressions
> equivalent:
>
> '("\\<\\(false\\|true\\)\\>" . font-lock-constant-face)
>
> (list (concat "\\<\\(" c++-literals "\\)\\>") '(.
font-lock-constant-face))
>
> Assume c++-literals is a variable containing the contents of the original.
> Second, how do I fix the second expression to be the equivalent of the
> first.  Finally, what does that dot mean, I've tried looking in the
> hyperspec, but no luck, I think it just acts as a kind of wildcard
> placeholder, but I'm unsure.

Try CONS instead of LIST
(cons (concat "\\<\\(" c++-literals "\\)\\>") 'font-lock-constant-face))

The dot notation is for representing the car and cdr of a cons.  You don't
see it in a proper list because the cdr is another list:

CL-USER 4 : 1 > (cons 'a 'b)
(A . B)

CL-USER 5 : 1 > (cons 'a '(b c))
(A B C)

CL-USER 6 : 1 > '(a . (b . (c)))
(A B C)


--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")