5.9.3 Defining Named Functions

Functions can be defined by the defun special form. However define is the more preferred way. (see Definitions.)

Macro: defun name lambda-list body-forms…

defun initialises the function definition of the symbol name to the lambda expression resulting from the concatenation of the symbol lambda, lambda-list and the body-forms.

The body-forms may contain a documentation string for the function as its first form and an interactive calling specification as its first (if there is no doc-string) or second form if the function may be called interactively by the user (see Lambda Expressions).

An example function definition taken from the Librep source code is:

(defun load-all (file)
  "Try to load files called FILE (or FILE.jl, etc) from all
directories in the Lisp load path."
  (mapc (lambda (dir)
          (let
              ((full-name (expand-file-name file dir)))
            (when (or (file-exists-p full-name)
                      (file-exists-p (concat full-name ".jl"))
                      (file-exists-p (concat full-name ".jlc")))
              (load full-name nil t))))
        load-path))