 That is, a function may reference local variables in the scope it is called from, but not in the scope where it was defined.To understand the logic behind Emacs Lisp, it is important to remember that there is an emphasis on providing data structures and features specific to making a versatile text editor over implementing a general-purpose programming language.For example, Emacs Lisp cannot easily read a file a line at a time—the entire file must be read into an Emacs buffer.