Elisp is a dialect of the Lisp Programming Language that is used to create the integrated environment of GNU/Emacs. It is a fully fledged programming language and is desgined to make the editor extensible to any degree.
2. Tips and Tricks
2.1. Understanding the difference between (list ...), `, and '
The following methods are similar but will produce slightly different results. When you use (list a b c), elisp will try to resolve the values of a, b, and c. Instead if you want these to be symbols, you must prefix them with the '. Here is quick example that covers all the different uses.
(list (+ 1 2) (concat "3" "4")) => (3 "34") (list '(+ 1 2) '(concat "3" "4")) => ((+ 1 2) (concat "3" "4")) '((+ 1 2) (concat "3" "4")) => ((+ 1 2) (concat "3" "4")) `((+ 1 2) ,(concat "3" "4")) => ((+ 1 2) "34")