From ...
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Subject: Re: Parsing strings into LISP syntax
Date: 1999/11/06
Message-ID: <3150903015555973@naggum.no>#1/1
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* Pascal Saremsky
| So the question is, how do I create dynamically a symbol 'fn which stands
| for the function (fn) from the input string "fn"?

  the function FIND-SYMBOL takes a string a returns a symbol with that name
  if it exists and a status keyword that says how the symbols is available
  in that package.  you can use this to control access only to external
  functions in your user-accessible package.

| And, how do I create dynamically a variable x which evaluates to itself
| from the input string "x"?

  you use special variables for this, and the symbol lookup is just like
  FIND-SYMBOL.  if the user shall be able to use new symbols, use INTERN
  instead of FIND-SYMBOL.

| I've played with intern, gensym, make-symbol, etc. but to no avail, and
| the Graham book does not go into great detail about them.

  INTERN should have given you a valuable lead.  perhaps you have been
  using a different package inadvertently?  if you post your code, however,
  helping you becomes significantly easier.

#:Erik
-- 
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