Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!njin!princeton!siemens!tjo From: tjo@dasher.siemens.com (Tom Ostrand) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: defmacro vs. defun Message-ID:Date: 15 Jul 88 15:33:02 GMT Sender: news@siemens.UUCP Distribution: na Organization: Siemens Research and Technology Laboratories Lines: 13 I've just experienced the same problems with byte-compiling Elisp code that uses macros, as described in some recent postings. Only difference was that the macros were defined in file A, and used in File B. The compiled code of file B set up function call sequences for the macros if file A had not yet been loaded. Then the compiled code hangs when it tries to "call" the macro. Question: How much is really saved by defining a macro instead of a function? The macros that caused the trouble were caar, cadr, cdar, etc. Also, for these simple macros, how much MORE would be saved by just writing out (car (car ...) ) instead of caar?