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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-03T13:11:26+00:00

The first one doesn’t work. But the second one works,which make me confused.. Could

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The first one doesn’t work.
But the second one works,which make me confused..
Could anyone explain a bit about that?

CL-USER> (funcall (first '(#'+ +)) 1)
; Evaluation aborted on #<TYPE-ERROR expected-type:
;  (OR FUNCTION SYMBOL) datum: #'+>.
CL-USER> (funcall #'+ 1)
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The #' is a reader macro. #'+ is an abbreviation for (function +). ' is a reader macro expanding to (quote …). The latter returns its argument unevaluated. So, '(#'+ +) yields ((function +) +) (#'+ will be turned into (function +) at read-time). The first of this is just the list (function +), which is not a function. Now, (function +) is printed as #'+, which is what you see in the debugger.

    Using non-literal lists will work:

    CL-USER> (funcall (first (list #'+ '+)) 1)
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