Julia: Cannot declare symbols starting with a number using the ':' character

[amitmurthy]

julia> :9A
ERROR: UndefVarError: A not defined
 in eval(::Module, ::Any) at ./boot.jl:225
 in macro expansion at ./REPL.jl:92 [inlined]
 in (::Base.REPL.##1#2{Base.REPL.REPLBackend})() at ./event.jl:46

julia> :aA
:aA

[toivoh]

This is to be expected, the : is for quoting Julia code, and not only for symbol literals. So only valid Julia identifiers can be retrieved as symbols this way. If you want to create other symbols, you have to use Symbol.

[amitmurthy]

OK. Should be documented though.

[ivarne]

See also https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/9945.

[amitmurthy]

Maybe Stefan's answer from here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23480722/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia - can be edited and added to the manual.