Eval executes the code, while read only parses it. (incidentally, in lisp, to get same effect as eval in JS/Perl/whatever, you pass the string into read-from-st

Eval executes the code, while read only parses it. (incidentally, in lisp, to get same effect as eval in JS/Perl/whatever, you pass the string into read-from-string and then the result from that into actual eval)