About Protected Symbols (Visual LISP IDE)

When Visual LISP is loaded, you may be warned if you attempt to change the value of some symbols used by the AutoLISP language.

Note: Visual LISP is available on Windows only.

These symbols are known as protected symbols, and include items such as arithmetic operators (for example, + , - ) and the values T and nil.

You can use the Visual LISP Symbol Service feature to determine if a symbol is protected. When you first start AutoCAD, protected symbols receive no special protection. If you change a protected symbol at the AutoCAD Command prompt, no indication is made that a symbol has any special status. However, once you start Visual LISP, this changes. From the moment you start Visual LISP until the end of your AutoCAD session, Visual LISP intercepts any attempt to modify a protected symbol. Processing of protected symbols depends on the status of a Visual LISP environment option.

You can specify one of the following options: