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From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <p...@informatimago.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: What's more efficient? Strings or symbols?
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:49:32 +0200
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Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> writes:

> When reading data from files and turning it into symbols, it's best to do
> the interning in a package which is instantiated for that purpose, rather
> than polluting CL-USER or some other package that is used for your code.
>
> When you no longer need a symbol, you can use the UNINTERN function to kick it
> out of the package. If you then also drop all other references to the symbol,
> then it becomes garbage.

Or just delete the package.


> (You have the same issue with strings anyway because you're putting them into
> hash tables. A string also won't be GC'd until you remove it from all the
> hashes, or drop your references to the hashes themselves.)

Or just drop the references to the hash-table.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.