Re: Converting string to symbol

[excalamus--- via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

I see, thank you very much.

Ideally, I would like global-abbrev-table to be the default.  With (interactive X...) I don't see how to do that.  

When I run M-x my-test <RET>, I get read--expression: End of file during parsing.  The function halts immediately and doesn't evaluate the body.  I'm not sure how I could catch that.  

(defun my-test (expr)
  "test interactive X behavior."
  (interactive  "XLisp expression: ")
  (message "before compare")  (if expr
      (message "%s" expr)
    (message "is nil"))
  (message "after compare"))

I assume read--expression is being used within (interactive X...).  It's not documented and I didn't have much luck trying to use it (not detailing those efforts here since it's really not meant for "public" use).