Use read command instead of regular variable assignment

[kaushalmodi]

This would allow the use of back-quotes and single quotes (and everything in general) without needing to use escapes for constructing the whole emacs config blob.

Reference: http://crowding.github.io/blog/2014/08/16/replace-less-with-emacs/

[kaushalmodi]

Briefly experimented with using read, but it did not work as the elisp code being read in contains a `, thus giving this error:

bad substitution: no closing "" in [ *]" (buffer-name buf)) ;Do not count buffers with names starting with space or *

It is this line:

(unless (string-match "\\`[ *]" (buffer-name buf)) ;Do not count buffers with names starting with space or *

[kaushalmodi]

An alternative is to use this trick by @alphapapa as suggested here.

[alphapapa]

Found it on StackOverflow. Works really well! :)

[kaushalmodi]

@alphapapa Looks like you need to escape just the `, right?

[alphapapa]

I'm not completely sure what you're referring to, but if you mean what I think you do, then yes, I think that's right. :)

[kaushalmodi]

I was referring to:

https://github.com/alphapapa/matrix-client.el/blob/1e118e903a106c164c8610687160c33a90e309c8/matrix-client-standalone.el.sh#L76

[alphapapa]

Right, the backquote is a metacharacter, even inside quoted strings and heredocs. I forget about that, because I always use $(). That bit me today when working on https://github.com/alphapapa/makem.sh, inside an elisp docstring.

If I were to rewrite the code at that URL, I would probably use (list... instead of backquoting and unquoting in that list.