Thanks for the tips - I am new to using match, the answers are illuminating, and so close... I perhaps oversimplified my example. What I actually need to do is to match on an arbitrary expression bound earlier., e.g. (match foo (bar #t) (_ #f)) Where bar is bound to some valid *match* expression. It appears the == fits the bill for something that resolves to some literal value in the end. I need to match what might be a literal, but could be something like bar being (list (and (? number?) (? odd?)))). In other words, I'd like to be able to generate or have the user supply any arbitrary match expression, and use it for the bar in the match shown above. Ideas? Thx again, Rob <div class="gmail_quote"> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:37 PM, rob cook <<a href="mailto:heycarnut@gmail.com">heycarnut@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> That is, without using a macro or eval. Id like to do: (define a 4) (define l1 '(1 2 3)) (match l1 (`(1 2 ,a) #t) (_ #f)) So that this example would result in #f, and #t if a bound to 3. Since of course match has its own quasiquote behavior, this does not seem possible w/o making a macro for "dynamic" match, or building the s-exp and using eval (yuck!). Is this correct, or have I missed something obvious? Thnx Rob </blockquote></div>