Reading primitive procedures

Frank Lay <[email protected]> Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:52:41 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.lisp.scheme.scheme48
Message-ID <CA+rVOkwMw1OXWZ9FXN=N47j9owK4wvtT_xfbdpxgJ0xuaxYmzg@mail.gmail.com>
Hello,

I don't understand the following Scheme behaviour:

> (read)
+
'+
> (read)
1 +
1
#{Procedure 93 +}

Why in the second interaction is the input '+' read as a procedure, but in
the first as a symbol?

I am very new to Scheme, so my apologies if this is a silly question. I'm
trying to write an RPN interpreter in Scheme, and I thought I'd apply the
procedure read from the input to a stack of operands, however, because of
the first case, this method isn't robust. I don't understand how to
'unsymbolise' a symbol into its corresponding procedure. Maybe there is a
better way to do this?

Thanks for reading.