GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual

Chapter 8: Evaluation

The evaluation of expressions in Emacs Lisp is performed by the Lisp interpreter---a program that receives a Lisp object as input and computes its value as an expression. How it does this depends on the data type of the object, according to rules described in this chapter. The interpreter runs automatically to evaluate portions of your program, but can also be called explicitly via the Lisp primitive function eval.

• Intro Eval Evaluation in the scheme of things.
• Eval How to invoke the Lisp interpreter explicitly.
• Forms How various sorts of objects are evaluated.
• Quoting Avoiding evaluation (to put constants in the program).