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Re: symbols and printed representation



One problem with your suggestion is that people expect
symbols which are EQUAL (in the sense that they
have the same property lists, Value, Function-Cell, whatever else),
to be EQ. Certainly this doesn't have to be true, much code
simply uses the primitives PUT/GET/REM, FSET, SYMEVAL,SET,FSYMEVAL
on symbols, that code would run the same. But some code does
(probably wrongly) hack Pnames of symbols, and some code uses
EQ. That code would break. However, there is nothing
sacred about representing VARIABLEs and FUNCTIONS as symbols,
I mean, it didn't come down on stone tablets. But people
do depend on it.

-gjc

p.s. This is an interpretation of your question, since
I am assuming caseification really wants to be at read-time.