On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Gary King wrote:
> I don't know if this is more efficient in general, but (intern (format
> nil "~A~A~A" 'a 'b 'c)) is another way to achieve the same end and it
> is slightly faster and conses about half as much in MCL.

   There was a thread [1] in c.l.l last month about about
generating symbol names and using *package* with intern.

   Gary is correct that it doesnt use much memory:

? (time (intern (format nil "~a~a~a" 'a 'b 'c) :foo))
(INTERN (FORMAT NIL "~a~a~a" 'A 'B 'C) :FOO) took 0 milliseconds (0.000 seconds) to run.
 8 bytes of memory allocated.

[1] http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&thf144f360a91d66&seekm=wsqoez9xpg1.fsf%40io.com

harley.