Surely the question is one of value versus identity. Which leads to the 
question, what 'value' does #hello represent. To me the fact that it is 
a symbol is an implementation detail encapsulated inside the 
implementation. Its external behaviour is that of a string literal (i.e. 
immutable) as is its value.

I see this as analogous with numbers. Is 1 = 1.0 and 1.0 = 1. I should 
hope so. 1.0 is implemented according to the float internal 
representation, and 1, is implemented as a literal.

Keith