[hatmatrix]

I think the idea behind homoiconicity is that you can generate and modify code using the same tools you would use on data; not string functions and regular expressions to manipulate the text you would call eval() on. Trying to understand semantics of code blocks this way is like parsing html with regular expressions. I used to modify built-in functions in emacs lisp by calling a modifying function (though later I was told the canonical way to do it was just to copy the function elsewhere, modify it, and evaluate it after the built-in was loaded).