BQUOTE: A "BACKQUOTE" facility This is similar to the facility of the same name in other common lisp dialects as follows: |'form is equivalent to 'form, except that, in the body of form, an element preceded by a "," is evaluated. An element preceded by ",@" is evaluated and spliced in, using APPEND. An element preceded by ",." is spliced in, using NCONC.. For example, |'(A ,B ,@C ,.D E) is equivalent to (CONS 'A (CONS B (APPEND C (NCONC D '(E] IMPLEMENTATION: | is given a read macro, such that |'form reads in as (BQUOTE form). (the readmacro is in T, FILERDTBL and EDITRDTBL). During the READing of form (but not outside a |' context), "," is given a read macro such that ,X reads in as (BQUOTE, , X). You will see BQUOTE and BQUOTE, if you edit a function using |', although if you prettyprint it, it will prettyprint as typed in. BQUOTE has a macro property to expand out its argument into the appropriate nest of CONSes and APPENDs, looking for BQUOTE,s. BQUOTE has an entry on PRETTYPRINTMACROS so that BQUOTEd expressions will prettyprint with |'. Rationale: No new special characters have been added, so that old programs, even with ,'s and |'s in them, will continue to load in. |' has been implemented in such a way that it doesn't conflict with the use of | as the "changechar"; since "|" has heretofor been a SEPR, this means that it should be possible to load BQUOTE and not worry about files made without "|" preceeded by a "%". The read macro doesn't expand the form into CONSes and APPENDs because it is important that functions which use backquote prettyprint reasonably. Larry