Well strings in various languages are immutable in many programming languages so that's not it. In strings I'd say the _content_ matters. If the value needs to

Well strings in various languages are immutable in many programming languages so that's not it. In strings I'd say the _content_ matters. If the value needs to be preserved at runtime that is a string, if after compilation the value doesn't, it's only used for binding at compilation time then it's a symbol. So, semantic litmus test I'd propose: if you search and replaced the value and recompiled, would you notice?