Subject: Re: Reading from file: without escape Backslash
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 06 Sep 2002 22:30:05 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3240340205017513@naggum.no>

* Thomas Guettler
| But isn't \n a newline?

  In Common Lisp, \ in strings only really escapes the " that would terminate
  the string, but since there is a need for an escape character, also itself.
  Another way to do this would be let two delimiters become one, but that was
  a path not taken for Common Lisp.  The reason for this is that \ is useful
  to make certain that any character is really a constituent in the print name
  of symbols.  Note that Common Lisp has both a single-escape and a
  multiple-escape mechanism with \ and |, respectively.  The latter, however,
  also makes letters retain their case, so the decision to use | over \ also
  has to be balanced for aesthetics.  There is nothing syntactically wrong in
  writing code |with| |symbols| |like| |this|, but it tends to get on people's
  nerves.

-- 
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.