I don't know about lumen, but i think in Scheme a symbol is "just" an immutable string, except that is used in a different ways for different purposes than stri

I don't know about lumen, but i think in Scheme a symbol is "just" an immutable string, except that is used in a different ways for different purposes than strings which are for text. Here is Guile Scheme (not sure if this is standard or Guile specific): scheme@(guile-user)> 1e9 $2 = 1.0e9 scheme@(guile-user)> (string->symbol "1e9") $3 = #{1e9}# ;; This the double quote equivalent for symbols. scheme@(guile-user)> (define #{1e9}# "foo") scheme@(guile-user)> #{1e9}# $4 = "foo" As you can see, 1e9 is read as a number, but that does not mean it cannot also be a symbol, it just requires us sneaking around the reader or using the quoting construct.