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From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Implode, explode and Common Lisp
Message-ID: <7299@think.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 11:47:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: think.7299
Posted: Thu Aug  6 11:47:50 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 11:48:42 EDT
References: <1840@chalmers.UUCP> <771@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@godot.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Distribution: world
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 31

In article <771@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu.UUCP (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>(defun explode (atom-name)
>  "Explodes the atom name into a list of characters."
>  (coerce (string atom-name) 'list))
>
>(defun implode (charlist)
>  "Given a list of characters, returns an imploded atom name."
>  (intern (coerce charlist 'string)))

These don't fit the poster's specifications.  He said that CHARLIST is
a list of symbols and strings, but your IMPLODE expects a sequence of
characters.  Here are versions that I think are completely compatible
with Maclisp.

(defun implode (charlist)
  (intern (map 'string #'character charlist)))

;;; This is more complex because EXPLODE isn't restricted to symbols
(defun explode (object &aux (str (make-string 1)))
  (map 'list #'(lambda (char)
		  (setf (aref str 0) char)
		   (intern str))
       (with-output-to-string (s)
	 (prin1 object s))))

---
Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
seismo!think!barmar