RE: [External] : Re: append, push, and add-to-list.

[Drew Adams]

> I'm curious why `add-to-list' must take 'company-backends, i.e.,
> (quote company-backends) as one of its argument, while the other
> functions can directly use the unquoted form.

It's not that it "must take" a quoted symbol as arg.
It's that takes a symbol as arg.  That symbol can be
provided any way you like, i.e., by evaluating any
sexp that results in a symbol.

It's essentially equivalent to using both a `pushnew'
and a `set' or `setq' (with a variable as PLACE).  It
sets the variable value of its symbol arg to the new
list value.

As others have said, you will do yourself a favor by
reading (even studying) the Elisp manual.

Likewise, by looking at the Elisp source code provided
with Emacs.  The source code is freely available;
consider taking advantage of that fact.

`grep' the source code and use `flush-lines' to remove
instances where the first arg to `add-to-list' is a
quoted symbol, to get a feel for its use evaluating a
sexp (other than a quoted symbol) that yields a symbol.