Subject: Re: bug#78952: Bug or feature? intern-soft return non-exists symbol

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:36:27 +0300

tags 78952 notabug
thanks

> From: Lin Sun <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2025 04:22:38 +0000
> msip_labels: 
> 
> Hi, get confused intern-soft return a symbol which already unbound, 
> 
> Here are the lines to make a symbol then makunbound the symbol, but after that the intern-soft still return the symbol:
> 
> (setq a-test-variable-unbound-later t)
> 
> (intern-soft "a-test-variable-unbound-later")
> 
> (makunbound 'a-test-variable-unbound-later)
> 
> (boundp 'a-test-variable-unbound-later)
> 
> (intern-soft "a-test-variable-unbound-later") ;; why not nil?
> 
> It's a feature or a bug? Thanks

makunbound doesn't remove the symbol from obarray.  Use unintern to
remove it.

This is not a bug.