Strings and symbols (Was: Case sensitive maxima)

I think that some historical perspective may help.
In 1967 or so, MACLISP did not have strings, just symbols
whose print-names could be printed. It also only had
upper case.

It seems to me that the disadvantage of true strings is
that they look like atoms... e.g. (atom "abc") is t.
but they can't have property lists and can't be assigned
values.  They could always be made into symbols and then
the string would be the symbol's print name.

The advantage of strings has to do with memory savings
in not producing symbol structure. Anything else?

RJF


ole.rohne@cern.ch wrote:

>Ray> (..) It also treats symbols as strings in various places.
>
>And even as maxima seems to accept strings at the user level, they are
>really symbols with the magical &-prefix - as I discovered when I
>tried to set $gnuplot_command...
>
>Does anyone know what is the intention of having double quotes in the
>maxima syntax, is really supposed to be strings, or is it to be able
>to use really sick variable names? Currently, both are possible...
>
>Ole
>
>
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