string > symbol?

[Ken Tilton <71460.744@compuserve.com>]

We keep running into the need to make a string into a symbol, but things are
not going well.

"intern" is not really working for us, but I gather that is the way to go.
here's the scoop.

Suppose we have a string we wish to parameterize: 'Hi, I'm #name#". We want to
take the bit between #s and treat it as a slot accessor:

  (expand a-string a-target), which would lead to (at some point):

     (funcall (string-to-symbol (stuff-between #\# a-string)) a-target)

which would be in this case the same as (name a-target).

But this don't work. Intern is advertised in CLtL as converting a string to a
symbol, but I note the returned value is |NAME|, not "name".

Is there a way to do what we are trying, or am I just taking a non-Lisp
approach to a problem?

Cheers, Ken