intern

(intern string)

Returns the symbol named by string (no case folding). rontolisp symbols compare by name — there is no separate intern table — so the result is eq to any symbol with the same name, including quoted literals. On the interpreter the name is interned into the current package (Common Lisp's *package* semantics): an accessible symbol keeps its home spelling, and an unknown name becomes a symbol of the package selected by in-package — which is what lets a macro-time (intern (concatenate ...)) name the same function as a literal defun in that file. A string that already carries a package qualifier ("LIB:WIDGET") names that symbol rather than a fresh symbol of the whole string, so a canonical spelling produced at run time — the type name type-of reads off a class, say — round-trips. (intern name :keyword) builds a keyword, and (intern name package) accepts any package designator — a keyword, a string, or a package value held in a variable; a package that does not exist signals an error. Like find-symbol, a second value reports the accessibility status of the name (nil for a name the package does not already provide). Deviation from Common Lisp: on the compiled backends a package-qualified intern always yields the single-colon external spelling, so an unexported symbol interned this way is not eq to its double-colon literal (calling it as a function still works).