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A special form is a primitive function specially marked so that its arguments are not all evaluated. Most special forms define control structures or perform variable bindings—things which functions cannot do.
Each special form has its own rules for which arguments are evaluated and which are used without evaluation. Whether a particular argument is evaluated may depend on the results of evaluating other arguments.
Here is a list, in alphabetical order, of all of the special forms in Emacs Lisp with a reference to where each is described.
and
catch
cond
condition-case
defconst
defmacro
defun
defvar
function
if
interactive
let
let*
or
prog1
prog2
progn
quote
save-current-buffer
save-excursion
save-restriction
save-window-excursion
setq
setq-default
track-mouse
unwind-protect
while
with-output-to-temp-buffer
Common Lisp note: Here are some comparisons of special forms in GNU Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp.setq
,if
, andcatch
are special forms in both Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp.defun
is a special form in Emacs Lisp, but a macro in Common Lisp.save-excursion
is a special form in Emacs Lisp, but doesn't exist in Common Lisp.throw
is a special form in Common Lisp (because it must be able to throw multiple values), but it is a function in Emacs Lisp (which doesn't have multiple values).