9 Symbols

A symbol is an object with a unique name. This chapter describes symbols, their components, their property lists, and how they are created and interned. Separate chapters describe the use of symbols as variables and as function names; see Variables, and Functions. For the precise read syntax for symbols, see Symbol Type.

You can test whether an arbitrary Lisp object is a symbol with symbolp:

function symbolp object

This function returns t if object is a symbol, nil otherwise.

• Symbol Components		Symbols have names, values, function definitions and property lists.
• Definitions		A definition says how a symbol will be used.
• Creating Symbols		How symbols are kept unique.
• Symbol Properties		Each symbol has a property list for recording miscellaneous information.