From a pragmatic point of view, I'd summarize the situation as
follows:
- The Clojure documentation lists which characters can be used in
symbols. If you care about long-term portability, you'd best stick
to those, though no one will sign a contract guaranteeing this list
forever.
Given how young the language is, I don't find that particularly
reassuring.
- Two characters, . and /, are treated specially even though this is
not or not clearly stated in the documnentation. Better don't use
those in unqualified symbols.
Clearly enough in http://clojure.org/reader to know to avoid them as
generic symbol characters.
- Two symbols, ns and in-ns, are treated specially in var lookups.
They will always resolve to their meanings in clojure.core, even if
defined differently in some other namespace. This is not documented
and may be a temporary feature of the current documentation.
Didn't realize that, good to know.
Thanks to Meikel and Per as well for their comments.
I think I'll stick to using what works even if not officially
sanctioned, with the belief that clojure will 'do the right thing' and
not take away symbol characters without:
a) very very good reason and
b) prominent notice of the new functionality of the off-limits-to-
symbols characters in the release notes.
--Doug
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