appt <--> cal: a partial solution

Hello Some days ago I wrote that appt.el would not annotate diary entries which contain the diary-nonmarking-symbol (ordinarily `&'). I digged into appt.el and the culprit is the appt-make-list funtion After changing (while (string-match "\\`[ \t\n]*\\([0-9]?[0-9]\\(:[0-9][0-9]\\)?[ \t]*\\(am\\|pm\\)?\\|noon\\|midnight\\|midnite\\).*$" time-string)) TO (while (or (string-match "\\`[ \t\n]*\\([0-9]?[0-9]\\(:[0-9][0-9]\\)?[ \t]*\\(am\\|pm\\)?\\|noon\\|midnight\\|midnite\\).*$" time-string) (string-match "\\`[ \t\n]*\\(\&[0-9]?[0-9]\\(:[0-9][0-9]\\)?[ \t]*\\(am\\|pm\\)?\\|noon\\|midnight\\|midnite\\).*$" time-string)) It worked, that is such entries are added. However there is a problem diary-nonmarking-symbol is a variable set to & per default. So if somebody would modify this variable the above modification would not work. I don't know how to pass the value of this variable to this string, could somebody with lisp knowledge give me a hint. Regards Uwe Brauer