[Ecls-list] About unread-char and bidirectional streams

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

[CC of a message from comp.lang.lisp]

Given the following piece of code, which behavior do you find more
correct of the ones shown below?

(with-open-file (s "foo.txt" :direction :io :if-exists :supersede)
  (write-line (print "abcdefghijk") s)
  (file-position s 0)
  (let (a)
    (print (list (file-position s)
		 (setf a (read-char s))
		 (file-position s)
		 (unread-char a s)
		 (file-position s)
		 (write-char #\x s)
		 (file-position s)
		 (read-char s)
		 (file-position s)
		 (read-char s))))
  (file-position s 0)
  (print (read-line s)))

Basically the problem relates to the value of file-position and the
actual place where data is written right after an unread-char
operation. This behavior also affects the behavior of an
implementation when reading, for instance, a Return + Linefeed
sequence.

Is this simply undefined? I found the section on streams in the ANSI
specification to be, say, lacking in all aspects, hehe.

This is SBCL 1.0.10, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
"abcdefghijk"
(0 #\a 1 NIL 0 #\x 1 #\a 2 #\b)
"abxdefghijk"

ECL (Embeddable Common-Lisp) 8.12.0 (CVS 2008-07-12 18:54)
"abcdefghijk"
(0 #\a 1 NIL 1 #\x 2 #\a 2 #\c)
"axcdefghijk"

Welcome to GNU CLISP 2.45 (2008-04-04) <http://clisp.cons.org/>
"abcdefghijk"
(0 #\a 1 NIL 0 #\x 1 #\a 2 #\c)
"axcdefghijk"


-- 
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28009 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com