Created
November 22, 2013 04:09
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The symbol 1
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| user=> (symbol "1") | |
| 1 | |
| user=> (number? (symbol "1")) | |
| false | |
| user=> (symbol? (symbol "1")) | |
| true | |
| user=> (= (symbol "1") 1) | |
| false | |
| user=> (= (symbol "1") '1) | |
| false |
(Cemerick, that wasn't meant as a slight against you, because I've seen a lot of users who need the exact explanation you just gave. I found the situation genuinely amusing, not offensive.)
I agree with @cjfrisz that, given Clojure considers itself a Lisp, it seems unexpected that symbols act so differently than in most other modern Lisps (from clisp to racket), and I think this is a pairing of printer ambiguity (which may be hectic to fix) and unexpected symbol behavior.
Is this a bug or feature?
FWIW, symbols are interned in most Lisp dialects I've used.
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I think you have it just right, @cjfrisz. The only quibble I'd have is that if "heavyweight" was meant to refer to the relative size of each keyword / symbol, then keywords are actually the weightier of the two; each
clojure.lang.Keywordinstance contains a corresponding symbol, plus some hash stuffs. Of course, the interning of keywords you mention means that they might be faster to obtain if they're already in the pool.