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Converting Between Strings and Symbols

Problem

You want to convert a symbol to a string or vice versa

Solution

The built-in function string->symbol converts from a string to a symbol, and symbol->string does the conversion in the other direction.

For example:

> (string->symbol "hello")
hello
> (symbol->string 'hello)
"hello"

Discussion

Note that by default Scheme is case insensitive, so the symbols 'hello, 'Hello and 'HeLLo' will be the same:

> (and (eq? 'hello 'Hello) (eq? 'hello 'HeLLo))
#t

Using string->symbol is one way of getting around this problem when case-sensitive symbols are needed (for example when processing XML):

> (eq? (string->symbol "hello") (string->symbol "Hello"))
#f