I did vote on this, but I retracted my vote. Strings for both arguments is clearly a correct implementation to me, but combinations of symbols/namespaces/named/namespaced things are not so clear.

The same enhancement that joe suggests for symbol, would also apply to keyword.

See: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/222e4abc16df8b20

Probably same/similar solution applies to both issues.

-FrankS.

Stuart, I'm not opposed to the idea of separate protocols for Named and Namespaced. Where should I go about creating a proposal to create those protocols and get them into clojure? I'm interested in doing the leg-work, or being a part of it. But as an outsider, I don't know what to do next – creating a ticket in Jira exhausted my knowledge of the process.

Named being a protocol or an interface seems orthogonal to being able to create a symbol qualified with a namespace when you have a namespace in hand.

I don't think the patch goes far enough, not only should (symbol ns "foo") be supported, but also (symbol ns 'foo), given that (symbol 'foo) works and (symbol "foo") works, (symbol 'bar 'foo) should also work, but doesn't.

if Named is a protocol, and if you extend it to String, and if you make the symbol function create symbols from one or two Named things you still end up having to do (symbol (ns-name ns) 'foo) or (symbol (ns-name ns) "foo")

I am not sure I like this, but I would like a rethink of names and namespaces. Doing a lot of cross language work, it would be great to have protocols for "I have a name" and for "I have a namespace".

With such protocols in place, it would also be possible to separately consider implementing symbol et al in terms of them.