3.7 The if Special Form

A third special form, in addition to defun and let, is the conditional if. This form is used to instruct the computer to make decisions. You can write function definitions without using if, but it is used often enough, and is important enough, to be included here. It is used, for example, in the code for the function beginning-of-buffer.

The basic idea behind an if, is that if a test is true, then an expression is evaluated. If the test is not true, the expression is not evaluated. For example, you might make a decision such as, “if it is warm and sunny, then go to the beach!”