Subject: Re: Simple characters in the CL Standard
From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no>
Date: 1998/04/11
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3101287279591069@naggum.no>


* Paul Dietz
| I don't think so, at least not portably.  A simple character is defined
| to be a character with no attributes except the character code.  I don't
| see where it says in the standard that a base character has to be simple,
| or that simple characters have to be base characters.  A simple character
| in a string must be a base character, though.

  I couldn't find such a requirement myself, but STANDARD-CHAR _is_ defined
  to be a simple character ("any character that is not simple is not a
  standard character"), although this excludes most control characters and
  any 8-bit characters you may have.  however, no Lisp I have found have
  answered true to (typep #3\a 'base-char) or (typep #\M-a 'base-char),
  although the reason is that Allegro CL answers NIL, CMUCL 17f doesn't
  support bits or fonts to begin with, and CLISP doesn't support BASE-CHAR.

  however, I might think the question is moot, now that the minor confusion
  over "^@" has been resolved.

#:Erik
-- 
  religious cult update in light of new scientific discoveries:
  "when we cannot go to the comet, the comet must come to us."