Re: eval trouble

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> 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.

Yepp. I was still misunderstanding. Thanks, that was very clear.