On 13 août 07, at 03:20, Keith Hodges wrote:

>  Surely the question is one of value versus identity. Which leads to  
>  the question, what 'value' does #hello represent. To me the fact  
>  that it is a symbol is an implementation detail encapsulated inside  
>  the implementation. Its external behaviour is that of a string  
>  literal (i.e. immutable) as is its value.

I would love to be so sure in fact. I wonder (no time to browse now  
just packing fast to move) what are the real interfaces and their  
difference
between symbols and strings, because we do not use them in similar  
contexts.

> 
>  I see this as analogous with numbers. Is 1 = 1.0 and 1.0 = 1. I  
>  should hope so. 1.0 is implemented according to the float internal  
>  representation, and 1, is implemented as a literal.
> 
>  Keith
> 
>