insert a single character

Question

My goal Write code in my init.el file so that from now on, M-v will just print the BELL character (character number 27 in hexadecimal) instead of scrolling down as it does by default.

My failed attempts :

Attempt 1: (global-set-key (kbd "M-v") (quote ("'")))

This gives no error message but M-v just says command undefined and does not print the character.

Attempt 2 : (global-set-key (kbd "M-v") (insert-char("BELL")))

Produces the following error message :

Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘.emacs.d/init.el’: 
Invalid function: BELL

Attempt 3 : (global-set-key (kbd "M-v") (insert-char(#x27)))

Produces the following error message:

Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘.emacs.d/init.el’:
Invalid function: 39

Answer 1

Keybindings need to refer to commands, which means you need to wrap your code in a lambda form. Also this is Lisp, so you don't need to surround the arguments to a function in parentheses. That all adds up to:

(global-set-key (kbd "M-v") (lambda ()
                  (interactive)
                  (insert-char #x27)))