Re: eval trouble

["Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>]

Lennart Borgman (gmail) writes:
> Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> > "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
> >>> Here is the code that does NOT work:
> >>>
> >>> (defun mumamo-define-no-mode (mode-sym)
> >>>   (let ((mumamo-repl4 (make-symbol (format "mumamo-repl4-%s" mode-sym)))
> >> It works if I replace make-symbol with intern. But why does eval care
> >> about that?
> > 
> > eval doesn't care, but how would you be able to refer again to the
> > defined thing if you don't have its name in some dictionary?
> 
> 
> Thanks. I see. I thought eval interned the symbol, or perhaps rather
> created an interned symbol. In this case it does not do that.
> 
> Or am I still misunderstanding something.

Only intern interns symbols.  intern is called automatically only by
the lisp reader.  It's when a s-expression is read that symbols it
contains are interned.  When you call eval, it's already done.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

CAUTION: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of
85 million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.