Re: Do symbols need to be EQ?

BTW, you may be interested to know how Clojure handles symbols.

Unlike CL, where symbol is both a textual name, and a slot where symbol value may be stored, Clojure separates these concepts. The slot-holing object is called Var - it is similar to CL symbol. And sybmols returned by Clojure reader are essentially strings, qualified with namespace (another string).

Symbols are not reused, Clojure reader creates new instances of them freely.