Re: Problem understanding set-register syntax

[PJ Weisberg]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 5:47 AM, Aurélien Bottazzini
<aurelien.bottazzini@gmail.com> wrote:
> (sorry if this email is a duplicate, but the first one was lost apparently)
> Hello everyone,
> in my init.el I have
> (set-register ?i '(file . "~/.emacs.d/init.el"))
> which allows me to quickly jump to my init file using C-x r j i
> But I don't really understand the syntax.
> Why do I have to use the exclamation mark when I set the register?
> Why can't I just use:
> (set-register i '(file . "~/.emacs.d/init.el")) ; will say Symbol's value as
> variable is void:i
> I tried to search in the documentation for set-register and variable
> definition but I did not find
> anything to really explain it.
> Thanks for any help.
> Aurélien

English:
    !: exclamation mark (more commonly "exclamation point")
    ?: question mark

Emacs:
    ?i:  The character 'i' (which, technically, is equal to the number 105).
    i:  A variable represented by the symbol i.

Consider the difference between:

int i = 0;

and

int 'i' = 0;

-PJ