Re: Emacs internals + lisp guru question (with an error corrected)

[Thaddeus L Olczyk]

On 28 Sep 2002 23:35:11 -0700, gnuist006@hotmail.com (gnuist006)
wrote:

>There are some functions that take a string as argument.
>                                     ^^^^^^
>Text can be read from the buffer as a string.
>There are other functions that take a "symbol" as an argument.
>A string can be converted to a symbol.
>However, when symbol is provided to the function by converting a string
> it is not working.
>
>For example:
>
>(describe-function quoted-SYMBOL) works 
>    eg (describe-function 'describe-function)
>(make-symbol "describe-function") works
>
>but
>
>(describe-function (make-symbol "describe-function")) is not working.
>
>Is there a way to fix it?
>
>How can we get the code of describe-function?
>
>What is the meaning of the gibberish from
>(insert (format "%s" (symbol-function 'describe-function) ))
>
>What is out there to learn more about emacs/emacs_lisp and become more
>sophisticated?
>
>Many thanks to the gurus and novices for their very kind contributions.
Executing these three forms should clarify things:

(let ((sym 'describe-function))
  (funcall sym 'describe-function))

(let ((sym2 (make-symbol "describe-function")))
  (funcall sym2 'describe-function))

(let ((sym2 (intern "describe-function")))
  (funcall sym2 'describe-function))

To see the code ( if possible ) for describe-function do:
(describe-function 'describe-function)

Is should say something like:
describe-function is a function in "file"( underscored).

Go to "file" and press return up pops the file at the function
definition.

The one exception: a function which is an emacs primitive
imlemented in C. Then you will have to grep the source for it.