In elisp, symbols serve as fundamental data structures that are more foundational compared to strings. This distinction often caused confusion for me until my encounter with the read function.
~ $ (type-of (read))
symbol
The fact that the read function yields symbols instead of strings from user-input was a delightful revelation. This discovery convinces me that the fundamental nature of symbols in elisp when compared to strings.
You must log in or register to comment.
what do you mean by fundamental?
(read)
returns whatever the type of its input was. If you enter a string literal it returns a string, if you enter a symbol literal it returns a symbol, if you enter a numeric literal it returns a number, etc.Does that mean whatever revelation OP might’ve had was misunderstanding?
Yes.