LispMe I/O

Printing of objects

Symbols

Symbols are printed in lower-case. There's no escape mechanism for funny characters in symbols, as these cannot be input or generated.

Numbers

Numbers are printed in decimal without leading zeros. If floating point numbers don't have decimal places, the decimal point is omitted, too. At most 15 decimal places are printed where the last decimal digit may not be rounded correctly. Exponential notation is used for numbers larger than 10¹⁵ or smaller than 10^-4. (similar to the C format string "%.15g")

Big integers are printed in decimal if they're shorter than about 14000 decimal digits and in hexadecimal if they're larger (prefixed by #x). The reason for this is that decimal conversion takes quite a lot of time (proprtional to n²).

Complex numbers always print in rectangular form, where the real and imaginary part are both printed as described for real numbers.

The special real values infinity, -infinity and not-a-number print as [inf], [-inf] and [nan]. A complex number having an infinite component prints as [cinf] (complex infinity).

Characters

display and write print characters differently. write prefixes a character with #\ or uses ## for characters with ASCII codes <32 and display just prints the character itself.

Strings

display and write print strings differently. display just prints the contents of the string without any escape chars and without double quotes. write encloses the string in double quotes and escapes the characters ", \ and # with a backslash \ and writes all characters with ASCII codes <32 in hex notation.

Pairs and lists

The dot notation is avoided whenever possible. To avoid stack overflow in the printer, deeply nested lists (the limit in configurable in the preferences dialog) print as [deep]. Expressions which are to long for the output are abbreviated with ... and a warning is given.

By selecting the option Print quotes, you can make LispMe print quote-expressions in the abbreviated form.

Vectors

Vectors are printed using the standard syntax #( ... ). The depth limit (like with lists) applies to vectors, too.

Primitive operations

A primitive (builtin) procedure prints as either

[prim name] where name is the (standard) name of the builtin procedure.
[prim cxr code] for the special c[ad]+r family of nested car or cdr applications. code is a bitstring encoding the procedures being applied.

Closures

Closures print as [clos n], where n indicates the number of arguments

n>=0 means exactly n arguments
n<0 means at least |n|-1 arguments (= |n| arguments, the last one being the rest argument)

See lambda for more info.

Continuations

Continuations (see call/cc) print as [cont].

Promises

Promises (see delay) not yet forced print as [dprom] and promises already forced print as [fprom].

Ports

Output ports print as [outport type pos impl] and input ports as [inport type pos impl], where type is the port type (see extend.h), pos is the current read/write position, and impl is the underlying implementation object. The special end-of-file object (returned by read, for example) prints as [eof].

Macros

Macros (see here) print as [macro].

Foreign types

Unless a foreign type has registered an own printing function, objects of this type are printed in a generic way as [foreign type val], where type is the numeric type code and val the 32 bit value in hexadecimal.

Summary of specially printed objects

`[-inf]`	negative infinity
`[cinf]`	complex infinity
`[clos n]`	closure
`[cont]`	continuation
`[date date]`	PalmOS Date printed according to preferences
`[dbref flags name]`	an open PalmOS database
`[deep]`	deeply nested list or vector
`[dprom]`	a promise not yet forced
`[eof]`	end-of-file object
`[file path]`	an open VFS file
`[foreign type val]`	an object of user-defined type
`[fprom]`	a promise already forced
`[hole]`	a black hole
`[inf]`	positive infinity
`[inport type pos impl]`	input port
`[macro]`	macros
`[nan]`	not a number
`[outport type pos impl]`	output port
`[prim name]`	the primitive procedure name
`[prim cxr code]`	a primitive procedure `c[ad]+r`
`[serial id baud flags]`	open serial port
`[socket id]`	TCP/IP socket
`[strarr len]`	string array (used internally)
`[time time]`	PalmOS Time printed according to preferences
`[ts ts]`	PalmOS Timestamp printed in standard format
`[¬dbref]`	a closed or invalid PalmOS database
`[¬file]`	a closed or invalid VFS file
`[¬serial]`	a closed or invalid serial port
`[¬socket]`	a closed or invalid TCP/IP socket
`#gn`	a symbol created by `gensym`