Jan Vroonhof <vroonhof(a)math.ethz.ch&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: ... That is braindamage(TM) that is specifically made taboo in the binary kit building guidelines. If the libraries were statically linked in XEmacs binaries for distribution, there wouldn't be that problem. I may have much more to say about this in the coming months. I consed up a simple mapping function (just for you :-) last night to put in the programmer's manual. SQL in Emacs Lisp _really_ rocks. (This isn't the most general code in the world, but that's not really important). Here's another example of cursors, this time with a Lisp macro to implement a mapping function over a table. (defmacro map-db (P table condition callout) `(let (R) (pq-exec ,P "BEGIN;") (pq-exec ,P (concat "DECLARE k_cursor CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM " ,table " " ,condition " ORDER BY f1 DESC;")) (setq R (pq-exec P "FETCH k_cursor;")) (while (eq (pq-ntuples R) 1) (,callout (pq-get-value R 0 0) (pq-get-value R 0 1)) (setq R (pq-exec P "FETCH k_cursor;"))) (pq-exec P "END;"))) => map-db (defun callback (arg1 arg2) (message "arg1 = %s, arg2 = %s" arg1 arg2)) => callback (map-db P "xemacs_test" "WHERE field2 > 10" callback) => arg1 = stuff, arg2 = 42 => arg1 = b, arg2 = 97 => arg1 = a string, arg2 = 12 => arg1 = a, arg2 = 97 => #<PGresult PGRES_COMMAND_OK - COMMIT>