Hi there, I'm not sure but this looks like a bug to me. I have those lines in a file lets say "scratch.lisp" ;;; start scratch.lisp (defpackage :foo) (in-package :foo) (defmacro bar (bazzz)) (defun bar2 (bazzz2)) ;;; end scratch.lisp I start emacs and then slime. On the fresh REPL I type: ; SLIME 2010-12-02 CL-USER> (load "scratch.lisp") ;Compiler warnings for "/Dokumente und Einstellungen/fau/Desktop/scratch.lisp" : ; In BAR: Unused lexical variable BAZZZ ;Compiler warnings for "/Dokumente und Einstellungen/fau/Desktop/scratch.lisp" : ; In BAR2: Unused lexical variable BAZZZ2 #P"c:/Dokumente und Einstellungen/abc/Desktop/scratch.lisp" CL-USER> (find-symbol "BAZZZ") BAZZZ :INTERNAL CL-USER> (find-symbol "BAZZZ2") NIL NIL CL-USER> CL-USER> (eq (find-symbol "BAZZZ") (find-symbol "BAZZZ" :foo)) NIL It looks like SLIME interned another symbol BAZZZ into CL-USER? If I perform this procedure directly on my lisp's REPL (no Emacs, no Slime) it works as expected. I use CCL-1.5 and SLIME 2010-12-02 Thanks Frank