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.
(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.