   Lisp reader macros: what are they?
  I couldn't find an explanation on google: what are lisp reader macros? From what I could decipher they allow for creation of custom non-sexpr language extensions but I couldn't get much farther than that. Also, why does Lisp have special symbols (the whole #$ #? : business)? Are these just shortcuts and can be used to prefix a list instead of explicitly calling a macro/function?Sorry if the questions don't make sense. I'm a beginner and it's very hard to find reasonably clear information.   