Must be called in a transaction. Sets the in-transaction-value of ref to: (apply fun in-transaction-value-of-ref args) and returns the in-transaction-value of ref. At the commit point of the transaction, sets the value of ref to be: (apply fun most-recently-committed-value-of-ref args) Thus fun should be commutative, or, failing that, you must accept last-one-in-wins behavior. commute allows for more concurrency than ref-set.