[Gardeners] How to name symbols

[Peter Seibel]

On Apr 28, 2006, at 7:31 PM, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

> Since writing a keyword is easier than writing a string, for
> interactive use, it's acceptable to use keywords instead of strings,
> but in programs, I always use strings, to avoid growing indefinitely
> the KEYWORD package.

And if this were c.l.l. someone (Duane Retig, I think, usually does  
it) would point out that at may also not matter in compiled code.  
That is, if you write:

   (defpackage :foo (:use :cl) (:export :bar))

the DEFPACKAGE macro may well translate the keyword symbols into  
strings during expansion so a file containing this DEFPACKAGE form  
that is compiled with COMPILE-FILE will result in the same code in  
the .fasl file  as one containing:

   (defpackage "FOO" (:use "CL") (:export "BAR"))

and thus will intern the same number of symbols in the KEYWORD  
package when the .fasl is loaded in a new Lisp, i.e. none. On the  
other hand if you COMPILE-FILE the file and then dump an image, the  
image will contain the keyword symbol that were read while compiling  
the file. So it depends how you operate.

-Peter


-- 
Peter Seibel           * peter at gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp  * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/