On 7/22/05, John.Cowan <xxxxxx@reutershealth.com> wrote:
>
> > And if I want to avoid symbol clashes GUIDs should be sufficient. The
> > question is
> > just how often we need unique symbols (when things can be done with other
> > methods).
>
> Code generation is of course the primary use-case for uninterned symbols.
> For this use, GUIDs are too heavyweight to generate and "too unique";
> one typically does not need such strong uniqueness.
>

Indeed, but if you write them to a file and read them back again
(or stringify-modify-symbolify), then the uninternedness may be lost
(depending on whether the implementations provides a special,
non-standard read-syntax or not).

cheers,
felix