find-symbol

(find-symbol string)

Like intern but never creates: returns the symbol when the name is already known to the image, nil otherwise. "Known" means a cl symbol (function, macro, or special form), a keyword, or a user definition. Deviations from Common Lisp: there is no package argument and no second status value, and on the compiled backends (JVM/WASM) the argument must be a literal string — the check is folded at compile time against the compile-time view (cl symbols plus the program's own defuns), so runtime-defined variables and macros are not visible there (the interpreter checks the live image, including global variables and defmacro macros).