I want to create a variant of `defun' that takes arguments from Emacs and assembles a body to be evaluated by SLIME. It seemed to me that this macro definition w ould work: (defmacro ldefun (name arglist &rest body) `(defun ,name ,arglist (slime-eval (progn ,@body)))) For example, here is how it expands in a simple case: (macroexpand '(ldefun testslime (first second) (list first (+ 1 second)))) ;=> (defun testslime (first second) ;=> (slime-eval (progn (list first (+ 1 second))))) But that didn't turn out. In fact, even the `slime-eval' form just above does not work in a stand-alone fashion: (slime-eval (progn (list 2 (+ 1 6)))) Gives this error: Execution of a form compiled with errors. Form: (2 7) Whereas from the REPL, I get this behavior: CL-USER> (progn (list 2 (+ 1 6))) (2 7) So, I find this behavior surprising. Can anyone help me out? Note: I'm running Slime CVS from 2007-06-16 and SBCL 1.0.5.