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A definition in Lisp is a special form that announces your intention to use a certain symbol in a particular way. In SXEmacs Lisp, you can define a symbol as a variable, or define it as a function (or macro), or both independently.
A definition construct typically specifies a value or meaning for the symbol for one kind of use, plus documentation for its meaning when used in this way. Thus, when you define a symbol as a variable, you can supply an initial value for the variable, plus documentation for the variable.
defvar
and defconst
are special forms that define a
symbol as a global variable. They are documented in detail in
Defining Variables.
defun
defines a symbol as a function, creating a lambda
expression and storing it in the function cell of the symbol. This
lambda expression thus becomes the function definition of the symbol.
(The term “function definition”, meaning the contents of the function
cell, is derived from the idea that defun
gives the symbol its
definition as a function.) defsubst
, define-function
and
defalias
are other ways of defining a function.
See Functions and Commands.
defmacro
defines a symbol as a macro. It creates a macro
object and stores it in the function cell of the symbol. Note that a
given symbol can be a macro or a function, but not both at once, because
both macro and function definitions are kept in the function cell, and
that cell can hold only one Lisp object at any given time.
See Macros.
In SXEmacs Lisp, a definition is not required in order to use a symbol
as a variable or function. Thus, you can make a symbol a global
variable with setq
, whether you define it first or not. The real
purpose of definitions is to guide programmers and programming tools.
They inform programmers who read the code that certain symbols are
intended to be used as variables, or as functions. In addition,
utilities such as etags and make-docfile recognize
definitions, and add appropriate information to tag tables and the
DOC file. See Accessing Documentation.
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