CODEWITHSUNDEEP
emacselispquote
Enze Chi
Enze Chi

Reputation: 1753

I am confused about how to use a variable in elisp

I try to set the font as below:

  (let ((my:font "WenQuanYi Micro Hei Mono"))
    (when (member my:font (font-family-list))
      (set-face-attribute 'default nil :font my:font :width 'condensed)
      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
                   '(font . my:font))))

The set-face-attribute works fine. I can see the font is set to WenQuanYi. But when I check the value of default-frame-alist, it shows as (font . my:font) and when try to create a new frame (emacsclient), I got this error:

*ERROR*: Invalid font: my:font

It looks like it try to use the value name as a font name. So I am not sure what's the right way to do it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 59

Answers (1)

gsg
gsg

Reputation: 9377

The quoted list '(font . my:font) produces a cons of those two symbols, rather than the value that you want. Instead of quote you can use either backquoting or a call to cons:

`(font ,my:font)

or

(cons 'font my:font)

You might be interested in the info pages (info "(elisp)Quoting") and (info "(elisp)Backquoting"), which explain those constructs in more detail.

On an unrelated note, the emacs lisp lexical conventions for local variables uses hyphens like-this, not colons like:this.

Upvotes: 1

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