Occur: optional arg REGION usage

Question

I have 2 markers (created with copy-marker): b and e and I want to run occur for the string "foo" on the region between b and e. What's the correct syntax?

I tried:

(occur "foo" 1 '((b . e)))

because the help says:

Optional arg REGION, if non-nil, mean restrict search to the specified region. Otherwise search the entire buffer. REGION must be a list of (START . END) positions as returned by ‘region-bounds’.

but it doesn't work.

I also tried:

(occur "foo" 1 '(((point-min) . (point-max))))

to try to understand the syntax, but it doesn't work.

Answer 1

You are quoting too much and e.g. not giving a chance to point-min and point-max to evaluate anything - ditto for b and e in your first attempt.

Try (occur "foo" 1 (list (cons (point-min) (point-max)))) or (occur "foo" 1 (list (cons b e))) or use backticks and commas to allow the selective evaluation of subexpressions: (occur "foo" `((,(point-min) . ,(point-max)))) or (occur "foo" `((,b . ,e)))