Re: [Orgmode] Newbie elisp programmer requests a pointer to backtics...

[John Wiegley]

A back-quoted form is just like a quoted form, except every ,foo is substituted 
by the evaluation of foo.

  (defvar foo 123)

  `(foo ,foo) => '(foo 123)

They can be nested:

  `(foo `(foo ,,foo))

And lists can be directly interpolated:

  (defvar foo '(123 456))

  `(foo ,foo)  => '(foo (123 456))
  `(foo ,@foo) => '(foo 123 456)

You can do this to see how any form will expand:

  M-: (pp-to-string (macroexpand `(foo ,foo)))

John