[ambulancechaser]

can you explain?

    ((juxt type identity) (clojure.edn/read-string "x"))
    [clojure.lang.Symbol x]

It seems that the reader returns symbols just fine.

[kazinator]

I don't use Clojure; I have no idea. If two occurrences of "x" are mapped to the same object, that is interning; maybe what that does is use its own package-like namespace, separately allocated for each call.

The documentation for EDN says that "nil, booleans, strings, characters, and symbols are equal to values of the same type with the same edn representation." The only way two symbol values can be equal is if they are actually same symbol, I would hope.

[john-shaffer]

> The only way two symbol values can be equal is if they are actually same symbol, I would hope.

Why is this important? Specifically, why do symbols need to be interned?

In Clojure, "Two symbols are equal if they have the same namespace and symbol name." In general, "Clojure’s = is true when comparing immutable values that represent the same value, or when comparing mutable objects that are the identical object." [1]

[1] https://clojure.org/guides/equality

[reitzensteinm]

In Clojure land, equal but not identical? symbols don't cause any issues; they can be used interchangeably as map keys, etc. It won't impact code correctness, just potentially cause slowdowns.

With that said, I always thought symbols would intern, but that's not the case. It is true with keywords, however.

(identical? (clojure.edn/read-string "x") 'x) => false

(= (clojure.edn/read-string "x") 'x) => true

(identical? (clojure.edn/read-string ":x") :x) => true