On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Tyler Smith <tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca> wrote: > Oh, I see. Is this a special circumstance of the macro then, or are > symbols bound to strings and actual strings not interchangeable in > Lisp? See my previous reply. There's nothing specific about Lisp here. The concept you'll want to look up is "literal".