Lets say i want to get the documentation for a function, I'd say
(documentation 'foo 'function) but what if I only had foo and function as strings? E.g. "foo" and "function".
What would I have to do to them to make them usable as parameters to the documentation call?
[Side note: I'm using clisp, but I doubt that matters.]
Use FIND-SYMBOL, not INTERN. If you want to find documentation for an existing function, finding a symbol is enough. INTERN also creates symbols.
CL-USER > (find-symbol "SIN" "COMMON-LISP") SIN :EXTERNAL Note that Common Lisp symbols are uppercase internally be default. Thus you need to use an uppercase string to find the corresponding symbol in the corresponding package.
Also note that there actually isn't something like a 'quoted variable'. You want to convert a string to a symbol.
(documentation (find-symbol "FOO" "COMMON-LISP-USER") (find-symbol "FUNCTION")) the appropriate way to address the example problem? It works. I just want to make sure I understand this completely. (assuming I'd created a FOO function in the REPL).Use INTERN to convert a string to a symbol. Make sure you uppercase the strings because, unlike with symbols, the reader will not do it for you:
(tested in SBCL):
* (documentation 'mapcar 'function) "Apply FUNCTION to successive elements of LIST. Return list of FUNCTION return values." * (documentation (intern "MAPCAR") (intern "FUNCTION")) "Apply FUNCTION to successive elements of LIST. Return list of FUNCTION return values." 
INTERN will create the symbol only if it doesn't yet exist. So both should be equivalent, modulo typing errors, right?cl:foo just because someone wrote foo.