Emacs Lisp

Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used by the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors (which we will collectively refer to as Emacs in this article.) It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C. Users of Emacs commonly write Emacs Lisp code to customize and extend Emacs.

Related Topics:
Lisp - Programming language - GNU Emacs - XEmacs - Text editor - Emacs - C

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Emacs Lisp is sometimes called Elisp, at the risk of confusion with an unrelated Lisp dialect with the same name. In terms of features, it is closely related to the MacLisp and Common Lisp dialects. It supports imperative and functional programming methods. Lisp was chosen as the extension language for Emacs because of its powerful features, including the ability to treat functions as data.

Related Topics:
MacLisp - Common Lisp - Imperative - Functional

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Writing Emacs Lisp is not the only method of customizing GNU Emacs. Since version 20, GNU Emacs has included a "Customize" facility which allows users to set common customization variables through a graphical interface. "Customize" works by writing Emacs Lisp code for the user, and is limited to simple customizations. Not every user needs the full degree of extensibility offered by Emacs; those that do must write their own Emacs Lisp code.

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