From ... Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!isdnet!newsfeed1.telenordia.se!news.algonet.se!algonet!newsfeed1.bredband.com!bredband!uio.no!Norway.EU.net!127.0.0.1!nobody From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: hetrogenous binary streams Date: 16 Dec 2000 01:23:11 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 8800 8879; fax: +47 8800 8601; gsm: +47 93 256 360; http://naggum.no; http://naggum.net Lines: 17 Message-ID: <3185918591783243@naggum.net> References: <91bm27$m44$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3185837409763528@naggum.net> <91ebq0$rsg$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 976933027 3563 195.0.192.66 (16 Dec 2000 02:17:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Dec 2000 02:17:07 GMT mail-copies-to: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.7 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.lisp:5373 * David Morse | I agree with you in principle, and I would love to write a text file, | but I don't think its possible to write floats as text files without | roundoff errors creeping in. Or am I wrong? Yes. We have an important principle in Common Lisp: Write-read consistency. That means that whenever an object is printed out and *print-readably* is true, reading it back in produces an object that consistent with the object printed out. Achieving this is not always cheap, but it is a very, very important property of a language that defines the operations write and read for its objects through textual representation. Inferior languages may not go the great lengths that are required to maintain write-read consistency, however. #:Erik -- The United States of America, soon a Bush league world power. Yeee-haw!