Question

Any tips on fixing the emacs error “old-style backquotes detected”?

I’m sure the error is coming from some ancient lisp code I wrote.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Are you using the old code with an old or a recent Emacs version (or both)? If you do not need the old backquotes-style code then just replace it with the current style. The Elisp manual tells you how to use backquote.

In general, in the old style:

• You needed an extra pair of parens surrounding the whole sexp.
• Each construct, such as ,... and ,@... was handled like a function: (,...) and (,@...).

Example with new syntax:

`(foo ,bar ,@toto)

Example with old syntax:

(` (foo (, bar) (,@ toto)))