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The idea I'm struggling to explain, and probably failing to convey, is that the Lisp REPL does not look like Lisp when it accepts the Lisp.

It will be machine code that accepts unicode strings, parses those unicode strings into Lisp, compiles the Lisp into machine code, then evaluates the machine code.

So essentially it's not the same as passing a Lisp variable to a Lisp function inside a Lisp text file.

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Ah, I see, right.

One specificity of Lisp however is that the textual representation already looks like the abstract syntax tree that the Lisp variable which is passed to the Lisp function in the text file contains.

But I can easily admit that this fact can also be seen as some sort of illusion since in the end it is just a sequence of bytes.

I was also struggling to convey this point. I think you've hit the nail on the head.

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