clojure.core/symbol

View this page on ClojureDocs

Type: function Added: Clojure 1.0 Examples: 3 Runnable: 0

([name] [ns name])

Returns a Symbol with the given namespace and name. Arity-1 works on strings, keywords, and vars.

Examples

by dakrone on 2010-07-31 . May have evaluation errors. ▶

;; Returns a symbol with the given namespace and name. ;; ;; (symbol name): name can be a string or a symbol. ;; ;; (symbol ns name): ns and name must both be strings. ;; ;; A symbol string begins with a non-numeric character and can contain ;; alphanumeric characters and *, +, !, -, _, and ?. (see ;; http://clojure.org/reader for details). ;; ;; symbol does not validate input strings for ns and name, and may return ;; improper symbols with undefined behavior for non-conformant ns and ;; name. (symbol 'foo) foo (symbol "foo") foo (symbol "clojure.core" "foo") clojure.core/foo

by franks42 on 2012-03-13 . May have evaluation errors. ▶

;; some gotchas to be aware of: (symbol "user" 'abc) ClassCastException clojure.lang.Symbol cannot be cast to java.lang.String clojure.core/symbol (core.clj:523) (symbol *ns* "abc") ClassCastException clojure.lang.Namespace cannot be cast to java.lang.String clojure.core/symbol (core.clj:523) (symbol 'user "abc") ClassCastException clojure.lang.Symbol cannot be cast to java.lang.String clojure.core/symbol (core.clj:523) ;; Warning - the following generated symbols are non-conformant and may wreak ;; serious havoc in the near/far future when least expected... (symbol "abc def") abc def (symbol "123def") 123def (symbol "/123/def/ghi") /123/def/ghi (symbol "/abc/def/ghi") /abc/def/ghi

by phreed on 2014-10-04 . May have evaluation errors. ▶

;; but keywords and numbers are not names (symbol 3) ;; Long cannot be cast to String ;; ... and so they cannot be converted to symbols (symbol :dog) ;; Keyword cannot be cast to String

See also

• clojure.core/var (0)
• clojure.core/var? (0)
• clojure.core/symbol?
• clojure.core/name (4)
• clojure.core/namespace (1)
• clojure.core/keyword (7)
• clojure.core/resolve (4)
• clojure.core/deref (0)

---

Content from the matching ClojureDocs page, with authors credited on each contribution.