Re: Issue: COPY-SYMBOL-PRINT-NAME

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Wed, 8 Mar 89 12:36 EST
    From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

    I see no reason not to just say it returns a symbol whose name is EQ.

There might be implementations that, like Multics Maclisp, have a special
representation for symbol names rather than using an actual string.  This
could make it impossible for

  (eq (symbol-name (copy-symbol x)) (symbol-name x))

to be true.  I think string= is the correct predicate.

    No one is supposed to ever side-effect such strings, so that's not
    an issue.

    Not saying the result is EQ just encourages paranoid implementors to
    copy the string unnecesarily, leading to a loss of space for no good
    reason.

While I agree that the string should not be copied unnecessarily, I think
there are legitimate implementation techniques that would copy the string
necessarily.