Re: elisp syntax for .emacs code beginners help (inserting "" marks example)

[Tyler Smith]

rpd wrote:
> Then I wanted to insert whitespace between the quotation marks. Again I
> cannot find documentation for doing this but this code:
>
> (insert "[Event \" \  \  \  \"]\n") does output spaces between the quotation
> marks ie it outputs:
>
>   
Everything between double quotes gets inserted. This means that if you 
want to insert a double quote, you need to escape it. If you don't emacs 
interprets the second quote as the end of the string to be inserted, and 
the third quote as the beginning of another quote.

Spaces are not special. As you've already seen, any space occurring 
between two quotes gets inserted. Escaping has no effect on spaces, 
except to make your code uglier. So you could use:
(insert "[Event \"    \"]\n")

> [Event "    "]
>
> (using space-backslash escaped syntax)
>
> Is there clear documentation in any lisp/elisp or emacs help manuals
> anywhere to help one learn this syntax?
>
>   
Most Emacs distributions come bundled with the very useful Introduction 
to emacs lisp as part of the info system. Ctrl-h i opens the info 
browser, and you'll find the Intro to emacs lisp listed under the 
heading Emacs. It's a very gentle introduction to elisp programming. If 
you already know how to program in elisp, then the documentation for 
escape syntax is found in the node Character type in the elisp manual. 
You can get there by evaluating (info "(elisp)Character type"), or just 
by browsing through the elisp manual in the info system.

HTH,

Tyler