Why requiring fails with dynamic symbols?

Question

I just encountered this behavior of Emacs.

This works:

(require 'test)

But this doesn't

(require (make-symbol "test"))

Why is that and can I workaround it somehow?

maybe use intern instead of make-symbol? Why do you want make-symbol? — npostavs, Sep 9 '15 at 20:50
Oh, I just saw your answer. Can you please explain to me with simple words what's the big difference between these two? — qwe, Sep 9 '15 at 20:53
(equal 'test (intern "test")) => t, (equal 'test (make-symbol "test")) => nil, (equal (make-symbol "test") (make-symbol "test")) => nil. A symbol is not a name, a symbol has a name. — Jordon Biondo, Sep 9 '15 at 21:02
Out of curiosity, what's the use case that you have in mind for this? — Dan♦, Sep 9 '15 at 21:18
I want to modulize my Emacs init sequence, because I use Emacs on different machines for different purposes. So I'm just going to have a 'module' directory where I put all my init files (for example dedicated init file for auto-complete, init file with python settings, GNU/Linux settings, Windows settings, etc) and load just the modules I need. — qwe, Sep 9 '15 at 23:20

Iqbal Ansari · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-11 01:54:20Z

4

This works as expected:

(require (intern "test"))

Iqbal Ansari

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answered Sep 9 '15 at 20:52

qwe

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Unless you have a file named "test", you're going to get (file-error "Cannot open load file" "test"). – Dan♦ Sep 9 '15 at 21:17

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