From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!uio.no!nntp.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Name for the set of characters legal in identifiers Date: 14 Jan 2004 21:36:55 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 28 Message-ID: <3283105015922595KL2065E@naggum.no> References: <4004c6e2.127807819@news.eircom.net> <3283047574505462KL2065E@naggum.no> <4004f268.138951618@news.eircom.net> <3283057362064279KL2065E@naggum.no> <40052048.2C429E1F@setf.de> <3283091270658632KL2065E@naggum.no> <40058985.FF0A6B21@setf.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: readme.uio.no 1074116216 15511 129.240.65.210 (14 Jan 2004 21:36:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:36:56 +0000 (UTC) Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:9995 * james anderson | the hypothesis was that the constituent traits as set out in the | table on standard and semi-standard characters, which traits are not | supposed to be clobbered by set-syntax-from-char, would be useful to | characterise the set of characters which could be used in symbol | names without explicit escaping. That does not appear to be an unreasonable hypothesis, but it was not the hypothesis you tested. You tested whether a string of three characters, varying the middle one, would be read as a symbol or would signal an error. Any number of middle characters that cause a termination of the reader algorithm will produce a symbol read from the first character, a letter. | i would have expected the same status as that for #\: to apply to | whitespace characters and to rubout. But (read-from-string "a b") will return a symbol, namely A, when the constituent trait of the space is /invalid/. You did not test the length or any other property of the symbol-name of the returned symbol, only that it did not error. The secondary value returned from READ-FROM-STRING should be educational. -- Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.