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From: murphy@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu (michael r murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: strings with escape characters
Summary: How to read a string without interpreting escape characters?
Keywords: strings, escape characters
Message-ID: <27E0EDEE.49E5@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 91 15:53:18 GMT
Sender: news@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lines: 28


I'm rather new to using Lisp and I am having a problem with strings.
I would like to read in a C string and keep the escape characters 
as is.  I have enclosed a sample of my problem.  What I would like
is:

<cl> (setf foo "\nThis is a c string\n")

"\nThis is a c string\n"

I just want to get the \ in there without it being interpreted as 
an escape.  I can then handle printing it out.  Help.

Script started on Fri Mar 15 09:46:15 1991
murphy|ibma0|[51]% acl
Allegro CL 3.2.beta.1 [IBM RS/6000] (0/0/0)
Copyright (C) 1985-1990, Franz Inc., Berkeley, CA, USA
<cl> (setf foo "\nThis is a c string\n")

"nThis is a c stringn" 
<cl> (setf foo |"\nThis is a c string\n"|)
Error: Attempt to take the value of the unbound symbol |"nThis is a c stringn"|
[1] <cl> :exit
; Exiting Lisp
murphy|ibma0|[52]% ^D
script done on Fri Mar 15 09:47:00 1991

murphy@cs.uiuc.edu  OR  mick@uiuc.edu