It is generally best to confine the use of keywords to situations in which
there are a finitely enumerable set of names to be selected between. For example,
if there were two states of a light switch, they might be called :on
and :off
.
In situations where the set of names is not finitely enumerable
(i.e., where name conflicts might arise)
it is frequently best to use symbols in some package
other than KEYWORD
so that conflicts will be naturally avoided.
For example, it is generally not wise for a program to use a keyword_1
as a property indicator, since if there were ever another program
that did the same thing, each would clobber the other’s data.