hotkey for editing init.el / .emacs

Question

I'm a bloody beginner with lisp, so please bear with me.

I figure the best way to lean is to dive in. Because I'm setting up my Emacs environment, I'll edit my init.el often, I wanted to add a hotkey to find it for editing quickly, as I'll need it often in the course of the next weeks.

I tried:

(global-set-key [f7] '(find-file "~/.emacs.d/init.el"))

to no avail, the answer when pressing the next time is:

Wrong type argument: commandp, (find-file "~/.emacs.d/init.el")

I also tried to put it into an own func, mimicking a working hotkey (for deft (global-set-key [f8] 'deft) ):

(defun sz-init-el ()
  (interactive)
  (find-file "~/.emacs.d/init.el"))
(global-set-key [f7] 'sz-init-el)

That worked. So I tried adding (interactive) to my first trial:

(global-set-key [f7] '((interactive) (find-file "~/.emacs.d/init.el")))

But that would not work (again: Wrong type argument: commandp, ... ).

So, is there a way to set a global key binding without defining a function/command first? Or do I have to go via the defun detour?

Thank you for your help and answers!

Answer 1

You need to use a lambda (aka anonymous function):

(global-set-key [f7] (lambda () (interactive) (find-file user-init-file)))

Also, use of variable user-init-file is preferred over hardcoding the name.