Subject: Re: hetrogenous binary streams From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 16 Dec 2000 01:23:11 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3185918591783243@naggum.net> * David Morse <david_morse@my-deja.com> | I agree with you in principle, and I would love to write a text file, | but I don't think its possible to write floats as text files without | roundoff errors creeping in. Or am I wrong? Yes. We have an important principle in Common Lisp: Write-read consistency. That means that whenever an object is printed out and *print-readably* is true, reading it back in produces an object that consistent with the object printed out. Achieving this is not always cheap, but it is a very, very important property of a language that defines the operations write and read for its objects through textual representation. Inferior languages may not go the great lengths that are required to maintain write-read consistency, however. #:Erik -- The United States of America, soon a Bush league world power. Yeee-haw!