Literals

As described in section [*], some expressions evaluate ``to themselves'' or to copies of themselves. These numbers, strings, and characters, and are called self-evaluating literals. However, some expressions, lists and symbols in particular, do not evaluate to themselves. When an expression yielding a particular constant value is required, it is necessary to use QUOTE. Self-evaluating literals and quoted constants are called literals.

Although not all objects have external representations, some objects which do have external representations have undefined evaluation semantics. These vectors (section [*]) and the empty list. QUOTE must also be used to obtain these values as constants.

Special form


\begin{inset}{} Yields {\it object\/}. The {\it object\/} is not evaluated; thus... ...uld not be altered using {\tt SET} or any other side-effecting form. \end{inset}