This is an old revision of the document!
Package and symbol operations
Functions that deal with symbols alone or in the context of packages. Here we just describe the functions in terms of input and output. Further explanation will be in different section.
SYMBOL-VALUE and SYMBOL-FUNCTION
Return the symbol's value resp. function object bound in global context. Both accept one argument that must be symbol.
>(symbol-value 'pi) ; PI is global variable 3.14159 >(symbol-function 'cons) ; CONS is standard function #<function CONS>
SYMBOL-NAME
Expects one argument that must be symbol. Returns the symbol's name as string.
>(symbol-name 'pi) ; PI is global variable "PI"
FIND-SYMBOL
Finds symbol by name in a package. Expects one or two string arguments. First is symbol name and the second is optional package name. If the package name is not supplied, dynamic current package is used. Returns the symbol if it is found, otherwise NIL. If it is found, also prints the symbol's relation to the package. Note that in Common LISP, this function returns two values, the second is a keyword which characterizes the relation. LabLISP function prints the same keyword, but it is not output of the function, because LabLisp does not support multiple values yet.
>(find-symbol "PI") ; USER package will be searched :INHERITED ; it is inherited from base package LABLISP PI >(find-symbol "PI" "LABLISP") ; now we search in LABLISP package :EXTERNAL ; there the symbol is external PI
MAKE-SYMBOL
INTERN
SYMBOL-PACKAGE
PACKAGE-NAME
FIND-PACKAGE, MAKE-PACKAGE, IN-PACKAGE, LIST-ALL-PACKAGES, USE-PACKAGE, UNUSE-PACKAGE
IMPORT, EXPORT, UNINTERN, UNEXPORT
PACKAGE-USE-LIST. PACKAGE-USED-BY-LIST, PACKAGE-INTERNAL-SYMBOLS, PACKAGE-EXTERNAL-SYMBOLS,