From ...
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Subject: Re: Vector syntax for a string?
Date: 1998/12/15
Message-ID: <3122685926969359@naggum.no>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 422377108
References: <754ije$514$1@netra.msu.montana.edu>
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Organization: Naggum Software; +47 8800 8879; http://www.naggum.no
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp

* Louis Glassy <glassy@acheta.nervana.montana.edu>
| Is there a way a CL implementation can read a vector of
| characters and recognize it as a string?

  no.  reading vectors using the standard syntax can only create simple
  vectors, i.e., of type (vector t).  strings are like (vector character).

| into whatever kind of char (a base-char?) that lives in a real string.

  (array-element-type "cat") => character

  note that STRING-CHAR is no longer a type in ANSI Common Lisp.

| I'm fixing the read and print parts of the r-e-p-l loop in a small Lisp
| interpreter, and if I can, I'd like my version of the interpreter to
| handle characters and strings in a way that's consistent with CL.

  the reader for #( is basically (apply #'vector (read-delimited-list #\))).

#:Erik
-- 
  man who cooks while hacking eats food that has died twice.