In elisp, symbols serve as fundamental data structures that are more foundational compared to strings. This distinction often caused confusion for me until my encounter with the read function.
~ $ (type-of (read))
symbol
The fact that the read function yields symbols instead of strings from user-input was a delightful revelation. This discovery convinces me that the fundamental nature of symbols in elisp when compared to strings.
1 point
(type-of (read "foo"))
symbol
(type-of (read "\"foo\""))
string
(type-of (read "42"))
integer
(type-of (read "[42]"))
vector
(type-of (read "(42)"))
cons
Etc, etc…
The lisp reader reads text and it produces lisp objects of various types (which might later be evaluated as code).
