What could go wrong if I don't use \detokenize when creating macro names using macro arguments?

Question

I was in correspondence with the author of a LaTeX package in which I volunteered code similar to the following (I have anonymised it so that it is not obvious what package):

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\savemacrostatewithname}[1]{%
    \expandafter\let%
        \csname saved@macro@state@named@#1\endcsname%
        \package@internal@macro%
}
\newcommand{\restoremacrostatewithname}[1]{%
    \ifcsname saved@macro@state@named@#1\endcsname%
    \else%
        \errmessage{Saved macro state named "#1" doesn't exist}%
    \fi%
    \expandafter\let%
        \expandafter\package@internal@macro%
        \csname saved@macro@state@named@#1\endcsname%
}
\makeatother

In their reply, one thing they said was that instead of writing #1 in your macros, you should write \detokenize{#1}, as it is safer. Why is it safer? What might go wrong if I don't?

Answer 1

If you have

\catcode`\!=\active
\def!{\hspace{2in} \fbox{boo} \hspace{2in}}

then \csname foo!\endcsname is an error as the name doesn't expand to a sequence of character tokens, but \csname\detokenize{foo!}\endcsname is same as \csname foo\string!\endcsname and makes the token with name foo!