How do I cast between symbols and strings?

[glyh]

[Kodiologist]

Did you try reading the section "Symbols" in the manual?

Edit for future readers: you can convert a string to a symbol with hy.models.Symbol, and you can convert a symbol to a string with str.

[Kodiologist]

Er, what exactly do think of as the distinction between "converting" or "casting" a string to a symbol and "creating" a symbol from a string?

[glyh]

My bad, I know how to create a symbol with a string, but not the other wayaround. And I think there's possibly a bug in the compiler:

(str 'abc) ; => "abc"
(str '1) ; => "hy.models.Integer(1)"

I don't know how exactly it is implemented but I think it should at least be consistent. Otherwise this is a footgun for programmers.

[Kodiologist]

Your many low-effort posts (on the discussion board and the issue list) are a waste of my time. If you must post, please put substantially more thought and effort into figuring out the situation, and be more selective in what you post.

[glyh]

I don't think many of your answers actually solve my questions. Yeah they are small details but it turns out sometimes there's no way to do it(e.g. import from future ).

If you think these are noise, I will not post any of similar posts again here. Good luck.

[Kodiologist]

You'll always get better answers if you ask better questions. For example, if you'd asked "How do I make a symbol into a string?" here, which is what you'd actually wanted to know, you'd probably have gotten to that sooner (but you did, of course, figure it out on your own in a few minutes, hence this still being the kind of question I'm complaining about). In the other case, you asked "How do I prevent macros from polluting the global namespace via import?", when what it seems you meant to ask is "How do I use an import __future__ statement in a macro expansion?" (but honestly, I'm still not sure). Those are different questions with different answers. Asking questions is a good habit provided that you're thoughtful about the questions.