Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!yale!Ram-Ashwin From: Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu (Ashwin Ram) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: does concat really return a string Message-ID: <28888@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Date: 11 May 88 19:33:10 GMT References: <324@ho7cad.ATT.COM> Sender: root@yale.UUCP Reply-To: Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu (Ashwin Ram) Organization: Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Lines: 29 In-reply-to: msb@ho5cad.ATT.COM In article <324@ho7cad.ATT.COM>, msb@ho5cad writes: > I am trying to 'concat' a string to be ised in 'interactive' so that a > default string shows up in the 'interactive' string. As a test case, > I have the following sections of code. Doesn't seem that the return > value of 'concat' can be fed to 'interactive'. No. If you read the documentation of 'interactive' you'll see why: If the argument is not a string, it is evaluated to get a list of arguments to pass to the function. In your second example below: > ;;; (interactive "*cgimme a character") > ;;; (interactive (concat "*cgimme " "a " "character")) the concat is supposed to return a list of arguments for the function (as opposed to a string containing an interactive parsing specification). You might try something like: (interactive (list (read-char))) enhanced with a prompt if you like. -- Ashwin. ARPA: Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,harvard,cmcl2,...}!yale!Ram-Ashwin BITNET: Ram@yalecs