comp.lang.lisp Google Group

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T21:36:05Z

CLHS 2.4.5 says:
The double-quote is used to begin and end a string. When a
double-quote is encountered, characters are read from the input
stream and accumulated until another double-quote is
encountered. If a single escape character is seen, the single
escape character is discarded, the next character is accumulated,

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T21:34:18Z

P.S. Depending on what _exactly_ you are processing [*], you might
get away with the kludge of
(set-syntax-from-char #\< #\Space)
(set-syntax-from-char #\> #\Space)
to read the above as the symbol LABEL (I see no reason why one would
insist on reading strings here).
_________
[*] e.g. whether such tags may contain non-constituent characters

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T21:24:08Z

CL-USER> (set-syntax-from-char #\< #\")
CL-USER> (set-syntax-from-char #\> #\")
It actually expects the same delimiter at the end as in the
beginning (maybe not according to CLHS, but to CLtL), so after the
above, <foo< would be read as "foo" and so would >foo> (which is
still not what is desired, of course).

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T21:07:49Z

To be able to use <abc> in lisp sources, just run:
(set-macro-character #\< (function bracket-string-reader) *readtable*)
on the REPL readtable. Above I showed a benign example installing the
reader macro on a temporary local readtable, but of course you can
modify directly *readtable*.
This errors comes from the fact that the predefined reader macro for

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T20:43:57Z

The latter is exactly achieved by doing the former (i.e. by suitably
defining #\< as a macro character), so in what way would you like to
do better?
Note that the only way the (standard Common Lisp) reader algorithm
can return a string is through the use of macro characters (only
numbers and symbols are produced from extended tokens).

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T20:43:17Z

On Nov 8, 3:01 pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:
Thanks Pascal, that is what I had so far.
I was looking for something like this (and which does not work):
CL-USER> (set-syntax-from-char #\< #\")
T
CL-USER> (set-syntax-from-char #\> #\")
T
CL-USER> (read-from-string "<abc>")

Re: Is there a better way to store this?

2009-11-08T20:37:17Z

Are you aware of the following link?
[link]
Pascal

Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

2009-11-08T20:23:50Z

Thank you so much for your guidance, even though I was actually
objecting to the statement that "only a monkey" would have used
"shrunk" as the past tense form (instead of "shrank"), which is
somewhat different.
Which is the body that issues pronouncements when a hitherto
incorrect form becomes correct in the English language, or a

Re: How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T20:01:52Z

(defun bracket-string-reader (stream ch)
(declare (ignore ch))
(coerce (loop for ch = (read-char stream)
until (char= #\> ch)
collect ch) 'string))
(let ((*readtable* (copy-readtable nil)))
(set-macro-character #\< (function bracket-string-reader) *readtable*)

How to tell reader that strings are delimited with `<' and `>' ?

2009-11-08T19:55:31Z

Hello,
I am parsing a file that has snippets such as
<label>
I would like to coax the reader to return a string "label". Right
now, I have defined a macro character #\< to collect characters from
the input stream until the matching > is found. But I wonder if I can
coax the reader to interpret <label> as a "label" string.

Re: How to set the value?

2009-11-08T19:39:27Z

On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:33:50 +0100, Adam Michalik <dode...@gmail.com>
wrote:
You mean browner - the US being the source of global warming and
whatnot.

Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

2009-11-08T18:58:28Z

And creationists cannot believe the immune system evolved naturally. You
are in dubious company.
Chomsky is such an idiot. He always argued that there must be a language
organ otherwise how could infants learn language so perfectly when
everyone around them speaks it imperfectly. Hello?
C'est vrai, mais mon professor toujours dit "La peuple determine la

Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

2009-11-08T17:40:41Z

I beg to differ slightly.
For one thing, I believe most languages are at least to some degree
artificial.
I mean, I just cannot believe that complex schemes such as latin
declinations evolved naturaly.
Besides, Edo Nyland's "Linguistic Archaeology" seems to give good
arguments in this direction.
But even if it wasn't the case historically, to get an efficient

Re: How to set the value?

2009-11-08T16:18:06Z

Add Bulgaria to this list.
As a sidenote, there is (at least in Bulgarian) an expression that
literally means "see stars in the middle of a white day", which
refers to the "stars" one "sees" after a strike on the head, but
that is a rather special case of surprise.
---Vassil.

Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

2009-11-08T16:12:26Z

There is no "correct" or "incorrect" usage for (natural) languages.
You can distinguish dialects, traditional and modern variants, etc,
but none of them are more "correct" than the other. Language is not
math.
The best that dictionaries can do is to present common/current usage
and variants, so those who aspire to follow them for various reasons