Subject: Re: file to string conversion From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/12/23 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3123377348984459@naggum.no> * Pierre Mai <pmai@acm.org> | READ-SEQUENCE is probably one of the best ways, if you want to stay | portable. I.e. something along the following lines: | | (defun get-file-as-string (filename) | "Returns a string with the content of the file `filename'." | (with-open-file (stream filename) | (read-sequence (make-string (file-length stream)) stream))) | | For production-quality code, you should check some of the semantics of | the interaction between ELEMENT-TYPE for OPEN/WITH-OPEN-FILE and | MAKE-STRING (I'm currently not sure, whether the standard guarantees | that ELEMENT-TYPE defaults to a type that's "compatible" with STRING. you might also want to check out the return value from READ-SEQUENCE. | You'd also probably not use MAKE-STRING, since MAKE-STRING initializes | it's result, which causes unnecessary cache pollution... well, it would if it did, but MAKE-STRING isn't required to initialize the allocated vector. in particular, the `initial-element' argument's default value is implementation-dependent. in Allegro CL 5.0, it is not initialized. it can be quite an interesting read, actually. (this taught me to zero out temporary strings used in functions with sensitive data -- I never thought I'd have to do _that_ in Common Lisp.) (I have written a SETF'able FILE-CONTENTS function that I use a lot, but my lawyer is working on the license stuff that should accompany all the code I want to publish. all the licenses I have seen basically focus on making it easy to give something away, but very hard to accept it. I want a license that makes it very easy to accept it in the simplest case (run it, use it, don't modify it, and don't re-distribute it, tell people where to find it), with options to get wider licenses (such as giving or licensing to me modifications of any kind, so the _single_ maintained version can be improved, and such that those who redistribute are required to accept all newer versions in addition to or replacing older versions, etc). if anybody knows of a license that grants something like this (more details upon request), let me know -- it could save me a _lot_ of lawyer fees. both GNU GPL and LGPL are completely useless. we're investigating the BSD license.) #:Erik -- Nie wieder KrF! Nie wieder KrF! Nie wieder KrF! Nie wieder KrF!