'( + 1 2 3 4 5) does not return (+ 1 2 3 4 5), but (quote ( + 1 2 3 4 5)) does

[bill nom nom]

'( + 1 2 3 4 5) does not return (+ 1 2 3 4 5), but (quote ( + 1 2 3 4 5)) does return (+ 1 2 3 4 5)
why is this?

[Kenny Evitt]

This is ... maybe not a 'bug' per-se, but a surprising behavior that has been reported several times and, I agree, should be fixed.

The basic issue seems to be that the Clojure eval code doesn't bother to print primitive or literal values or, weirdly, forms using the quote reader macro as in your example.

Fortunately this behavior isn't really anything more than annoyingly surprising – it doesn't break anything, at least AFAIK.

I just created a new issue for the Clojure plugin for this. I don't expect any of the core team to work on this anytime soon; tho I could be wrong. So if you can help, even just by looking into it a little, that would be greatly appreciated.