Subject: Re: Writing CLOS objects to a file portably? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 06:42:32 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3217992151071959@naggum.net> * Kevin Rosenberg | You could you use the function array-element-type to retrieve the | specialized element type. The element-type could be stored and then | loaded to recreate the array. The only problem I see is the ANSI | standard leaves the value of array-element-type as | implementation-dependent. So, you might get some supertype of the | element-type. Yes, this might be little worrying. Except for the predefined types bitvector and string, we rely on commonality of implementations, but one could imagine a situation where implementations A and B were such that they had no common types of specialized arrays and shipping data back and forth between them would be like calling upgraded-array-element-type on each implementation with the result from the other, converging on t as the element-type. To avoid this problem, you would have to store the intended element-type, not the actual element-type. /// -- The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture has taught you. Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are more important to you than those in your past ever will be. The world is changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.