Does this happen in Common Lisp?

Question

From Steve Yegge's "Lisp is Not an Acceptable Lisp":

 Lisp has a little syntax, and it shows up occasionally as, for instance, '(foo)
 being expanded as (quote foo), usually when you least expect it.

What is he talking about with '(foo) being expanded into (quote foo) in some situations? (As opposed, I would imagine, to (quote (foo))).

Answer 1

I don't know. I cannot think of any situation where '(foo) would be turned into (quote foo) since it's actually tyhe same as (quote (foo)) (the ' symbol is typically a reader macro that reads the next sexp and returns it surrounded by a call to the quote special form).

Answer 2

'(foo) is not "expanded" into (quote foo). The two forms are precisely the same; the lisp reader READS '(foo) as (quote foo).

To think they are somehow different is to completely misunderstand how lisp reads forms internally.

Answer 3

In PicoLisp, '(foo) is equivalent to (quote foo) and 'foo is equivalent to (quote . foo).

I didn't understand that paragraph either. It's conceivable that Yegge was referring to PicoLisp (in the context of porting between Lisp dialects), or he could have been referring to a bug or corner case in a CL or Scheme implementation (though none that I am aware of.)