I have a number of convenience functions define to help me with grading assignments. As I go through the semester, i update all of these functions modestly so that they'rehelpful for grading the current assignment. I big chunk of these simple functions is taken up just declaring variables with (let (())) forms. Each function uses some ofhte same variables, e.g: (defun dh-find-files () (interactive) (let* ((base (org-entry-get (point) "ORG_LMS_ASSIGNMENT_DIRECTORY")) (gh (org-entry-get (point) "GITHUB")) (f2o `( ,(concat "Reflection/" gh ".md") ,(concat "students/" gh ".json")))) ;;;; "01/index.html" "02/index.html" "03/style.css" "04/style.css" (message "%s" f2o) ;; make more flexible for resubmits (shell-command (concat "cd " base " && git checkout " gh "-master")) (dolist (x f2o) (if (file-exists-p (concat base "/" x)) (find-file-other-window (concat base "/" x) ) (message "File %s does not exist, not opening." x))))) (defun dh-tests () (interactive) (let* ((base (org-entry-get (point) "ORG_LMS_ASSIGNMENT_DIRECTORY" )) (gh (org-entry-get (point) "GITHUB"))) (with-temp-buffer (shell-command (concat "cd " base " && npm test") t)) ;; the "t" lets us suppress buffer (browse-url-of-file (concat base "/TestResults/testresults.html")) ;; (dh-mocha-run) )) ---------- This semester I changed some elements of my workflow and I had to update all the (org-entry-get) calls to new values. It makes me think the code is less maintainable than it could be. I would like to do something like this: (lexical-let ((base `(org-entry-get (point) "ORG_LMS_ASSIGNMENT_DIRECTORY") (gh `(org-entry-get (point) "GITHUB")) ) (defun dh-find-files () (with-temp-buffer (shell-command (concat "cd " base " && npm test") t)) ;; the "t" lets us suppress buffer (browse-url-of-file (concat base "/TestResults/testresults.html"))))) Obviously it doesn't work this way. But is there any way to set macros like this to be expanded later inside a function definition? I feel certain there must be... Thanks, Matt