Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!att!alberta!calgary!cpsc!mdb
From: mdb@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Mark Brinsmead)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: The best way to save data
Keywords: save, load, lisp, Database
Message-ID: <402@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 88 23:55:01 GMT
References: <627@wucs1.wustl.edu> <7943@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <414@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@calgary.UUCP
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In article <414@aipna.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

> BTW, this suggests that the dump/load used for compiled data
> should be available directly, without compiling a file.  But
> it's quite common in Common Lisp for such operations (where
> you know they're there and want to get at them) to be unavailable.

   In fact, these functions are available in Symbolics Common Lisp,
and I just happen to have used them in a function which saves the state
of a program, some of whose "state" variables happen to be hash tables.
Symbolics *does* document this as non-standard and likely to be non-portable,
but it was still very handy. Just for my 2 cents worth, it would be a real
bonus to be able to save (in binary format) *any* data structure.

                              Mark Brinsmead @ UofC