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Re: Why don't let bound values die?


From: Stefan Monnier
Subject: Re: Why don't let bound values die?
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:46:59 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux)

> I think I still do not know exactly what an uninterned symbol is, but
> I guess it is something that can not be looked up, just somehow
> accessed directly. But it still has a name and I wonder why.

Fundamentally symbols are just special kinds of immutable strings.
Obarrays then are special kinds of hash-tables which only map strings
to symbols (whose name has to be the specified string).

A symbol may be placed in only one obarray at any given time (because
of details of the way the obarray-hash-tables are implemented, where the
linked list slots of each hash-bucket are actually stored directly in
the symbol themselves).


        Stefan



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