Symbols can be collected together into packages . If a symbol is not interned in any package , it is called uninterned . An interned symbol is uniquely identifiable by its name from any package in which it is accessible .
Symbols have the following attributes.
For historical reasons, these are sometimes referred to as cells , although the actual internal representation of symbols and their attributes is implementation-dependent . The name of a symbol is a string used to identify the symbol . Every symbol has a name , and the consequences are undefined if that name is altered. The function symbol-name returns the name of a given symbol . A symbol may have any character in its name .