Okay, here's my 2 cent quiz: Define a reader macro that reads strings but treats backslashes as normal characters, except if you escape the string terminator. This should work sort of like Perl's single quote string syntax: Perl: $pattern = '\w \s'; # five characters Lisp: (let ((pattern #"\w \s")) ; five characters ...) as opposed to (let ((pattern "\\w \\s")) ; five characters ...) but this works: (let ((pattern #"\w \" \s")) ; seven characters ...) The #" syntax is just to give you an idea of what I want; you can use whatever macro character(s) you like. Send answers to the list, preferably with at least one working test case displayed, e.g. something like cl-user> #"\w \" \s" "\\w \" \\s" cl-user> -- L (Yes, this is similar to a previous quiz. Sue me.)