“Symbol's value as variable is void: *” using load-file

Question

I have this function in my config file and for some reason, I'm getting this error: Symbol's value as variable is void: *.

 (defun reload-config()
   "Reload config.org"
   (interactive)
   (load-file (concat EMACS_DIR CONFIG_FILE)))

I have a similar function that works right.

 (defun find-config ()
   "Edit config.org"
   (interactive)
   (find-file (concat EMACS_DIR CONFIG_FILE)))

Ps: I'm defining EMACS_DIR and CONFIG_FILE as

 (setq EMACS_DIR "~/.emacs.d/")
 (setq CONFIG_FILE "config.org")

Answer 1

From C-h f load-file RET:

Load the Lisp file named FILE.

I'm assuming ~/.emacs.d/config.org is an org file, not a Lisp file. That is, it starts something like:

* all my amazing settings
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (setq whos-awesome 'i-am)
#+END_SRC

We can see that the first thing in that file is *; that is, just an asterisk. So when Emacs tries to load that file, it will look for the variable meaning of *, fail to find it, and throw an error.

If your file is set up as the example above shows, where all the Emacs Lisp is in #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp blocks, you can use org-babel-load-file. From its documentation:

Load Emacs Lisp source code blocks in the Org FILE.

You can use it as follows:

(org-babel-load-file (concat EMACS_DIR CONFIG_FILE))