From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Question on converting string to symbol Date: 2000/06/22 Message-ID: <3170667252754195@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 637628404 References: <3951ffbd.5075351@news.worldonline.nl> mail-copies-to: never Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 961682593 7663 195.0.192.66 (22 Jun 2000 14:03:13 GMT) Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 8800 8879; fax: +47 8800 8601; http://www.naggum.no User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.6 Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Jun 2000 14:03:13 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * Jaap Weel | Just a little question. If it's a stupid one, please point to the | appropriate chapter in CLtL2. As others have pointed out, too: CLtL2 is superseded by the actual standard, which I prefer to call CLtS, but that's informal at best. | I can convert symbols to strings: | (string 'abcd) => "abcd" | I'd like to do the reverse now. | (string-to-symbol "abcd") => ABCD For hysterical raisons, symbol names in Common Lisp are in uppercase and the Lisp reader is case insensitive, which throws most people's expectations off. The symbol named "abcd" prints as |abcd|, and the symbol named "ABCD" prints as abcd if you have set *print-case* to :downcase, which many do. In any case, reading abcd yields the symbol named "ABCD". (eq 'abcd (intern "ABCD")) holds for all abcd. #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.