[plt-scheme] immutable strings vs. uninterned symbols

Eli Barzilay writes:
 > On Jun  6, Ryan Culpepper wrote:
 > > --- Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
 > > 
 > > > On Jun  6, Doug Orleans wrote:
 > > > > Doug Orleans writes:
 > > > >  > (Are there other differences?  Garbage collection maybe?)
 > > > > 
 > > > > The MzScheme manual says that interned symbols are only weakly
 > > > > held by the internal symbol table, which seems to imply that
 > > > > uninterned symbols are never garbage collected.
 > > > 
 > > > No, it means that the references to the uninterned symbols are not
 > > > preventing them from being GCed.
 > > 
 > > Huh?
 > > 
 > > I don't think that uninterned symbols are held in the internal symbol
 > > table at all... hence "uninterned."
 > 
 > (Yes, mis-read "interned" as "uninterned".  Doug: this doesn't imply
 > anything on uninterned symbols -- they're collected like any other
 > objects.)

So why does it single out interned symbols?  Why doesn't it just say
"all symbols are garbage collected"?

--dougorleans at gmail.com