Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!dfs
From: dfs@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll)
Subject: Re: string to symbol conversion
Message-ID: <dfs.677520608@spock>
Sender: news@cunews.carleton.ca
Organization: Carleton University
References: <80761@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1991 16:10:08 GMT

In <80761@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> lewocz@pegasus.cs.Buffalo.EDU
(John S. Lewocz) writes:
>Is there any way to convert an arbitrary string like "bob" into the 
>symbol bob in Common Lisp?

If you don't have any weird characters in the string,

	(setq foo "bob")
	(read-from-string foo)  ;; ---> The symbol BOB

should work.  If you have some weird characters, but no "bars" (|) in the
string, then

	(setq foo "A #Bunch^&OfWeird**Cha#r$")
	(read-from-string
	   (concatenate 'string "|" foo "|"))

should do it.  If your string contains "|", then it's tougher, and
I don't feel like figuring it out right now. :-)

(Of course, if you place bars around the string, you may not get the
symbol in upper-case or whatever your Lisp's default is.)

--
David F. Skoll