Symbol (programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:23, 14 November 2011

Revision as of 02:30, 20 November 2011

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In [[Common Lisp]] symbols may use any characters, including whitespace, such as spaces and newlines. If a symbol contains a whitespace character it needs to be written as |this is a symbol|. Symbols can be used as identifiers for any kind of named programming constructs: variables, functions, macros, classes, types, goto tags and more.

Symbols can be interned in a package<ref>[http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/t_pkg.htm#package Common Lisp HyperSpec, system class Package]</ref>. Keyword symbols are internedself-evaluating<ref>[[Peter Norvig]]: ''Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in theCommon packageLisp'', namedMorgan KEYWORDKaufmann, 1991, ISBN 1-55860-191-0, [http://norvig.com/paip.html Web]</ref> and keywordinterned symbolsin evaluatethe topackage themselvesnamed KEYWORD and.

==== Examples ====