Category Archives: Programming

(Re)Naming Functions

Posted on 2012-02-17 by jcs

This is another note to myself. Quite often we want to give a function another name. Sometimes this is because we want a shorter name for a function that we use a lot. For example, even though I use smex … Continue reading →

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Generalized Variables and Macros 2

Posted on 2012-02-16 by jcs

Yesterday we talked about some of the difficulties in using setf in a macro and how these difficulties can sometimes be overcome by using the mysterious define-modify-macro. Today, I want to look at a more general approach that will also … Continue reading →

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Generalized Variables and Macros 1

Posted on 2012-02-15 by jcs

One of the wonders of Common Lisp is the generalized variable. Roughly speaking, a generalized variable is an expression that can serve as the first argument to setf. The official explanation, as given in Common Lisp the Language, 2ed., is … Continue reading →

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More Org Header Searching

Posted on 2012-02-08 by jcs

The little Org-mode header searching functions that I wrote about in Finding Org Headers And Links turned out to be pretty useful so I added another one. This function is like find-all-org-headers except that it limits the search to those … Continue reading →

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Finding Org Headers And Links

Posted on 2012-02-06 by jcs

Today I was looking through Xah Lee’s ErgoEmacs Google+ Page (there’s a ton of interesting stuff there—you should check it out) when I came across this post in which someone asks how to find links in an Org mode buffer. … Continue reading →

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Lexical Binding In Emacs

Posted on 2012-02-05 by jcs

A while ago in Lexical Scoping In Emacs Lisp I wrote that Emacs 24 will (finally) introduce lexical binding. Trawling through the EmacsWiki today I came across a page, Dynamic Binding Vs Lexical Binding, that describes the differences between the … Continue reading →

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Does Elisp Suck?

Posted on 2012-02-03 by jcs

One of the links from the CategoryCode page that I wrote about yesterday is the Why Does Elisp Suck page. The idea is to give people a place to be grumpy about Elisp. My first thought was that, really, Elisp … Continue reading →

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Learning Elisp Idioms

Posted on 2012-02-02 by jcs

I’ve said before that Emacs Lisp is pretty much like any other Lisp except for its library, which is specialized for editing tasks. One of the things I like about Xah Lee’s Emacs Lisp Tutorial is that it doesn’t concern … Continue reading →

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JSON And S-Expressions Redux

Posted on 2012-01-23 by jcs

After yesterday’s post on JSON Versus S-Expressions I thought that one obvious solution for people who want to use JSON tools to process logs is to have the (Lisp-based) logs convert themselves to JSON much like we did for S-expressions … Continue reading →

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Functional Thinking

Posted on 2012-01-20 by jcs

Here’s an interesting talk about thinking in a functional way by Neal Ford. I’ve tagged this post as Lisp but Ford doesn’t use Lisp—he uses some weird mutation of Java, a little Groovy, and a little Scala. The point of … Continue reading →

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