Packages are uninterned wether you prefix their names with #: or not

[Philippe de Rochambeau]

Hello,
according to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7894548/why-are-uninterned-symbols-used-for-package-names-and-exports-in-common-lisp/7894917#7894917, prefixing package names with #: uninterns them. In SBCL 2.2.4 on MacOSX 12.3.1, packages are uninterned whether you prefix #: their names with #: or not:

* *package*
#<PACKAGE "COMMON-LISP-USER">
* (defpackage bar)
#<PACKAGE "BAR">
* (find-symbol "bar")
NIL
NIL
* *package*
#<PACKAGE "COMMON-LISP-USER">
* (defpackage #:bar)
#<PACKAGE "BAR">
* (find-symbol "bar")
NIL
NIL

[Christophe Rhodes (csr21-cantab)]

I think this report confuses a couple of things.

Firstly, it's not the package itself that is interned or not, but the symbol that is used as a designator for the package.

Secondly, the default state of the reader when reading a symbol is to find a symbol with the name that is the uppercase version of the textual name. So not only does

  (defpackage bar)

define a package called "BAR", it has done so via interning a symbol whose name is "BAR" (not "bar").

Here is a transcript which hopefully illustrates the difference between using interned and uninterned symbols to name a package:

* (defpackage foo)
#<PACKAGE "FOO">
* (find-symbol "FOO")
FOO
:INTERNAL
* (defpackage #:bar)
#<PACKAGE "BAR">
* (find-symbol "BAR")
NIL
NIL