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Named Readtables Manual

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction

  • 1.1 Links and Systems
  • 1.2 Acknowledgements

• 2 Overview

  • 2.1 Notes on the API
  • 2.2 Important API idiosyncrasies
  • 2.3 Preregistered Readtables
  • 2.4 Examples
• 3 Reference

• 4 Indices

  • 4.1 Function and Macro Index
  • 4.2 Type Index
  • 4.3 Misc Index

[in package EDITOR-HINTS.NAMED-READTABLES with nicknames NAMED-READTABLES]

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1 Introduction

Named-Readtables is a library that provides a namespace for readtables akin to the already-existing namespace of packages. In particular:

• you can associate readtables with names, and retrieve readtables by names;

• you can associate source files with readtable names, and be sure that the right readtable is active when compiling/loading the file;

• similiarly, your development environment now has a chance to automatically determine what readtable should be active while processing source forms on interactive commands (e.g. think of C-c C-c in Slime (yet to be done)).

It follows that Named-Readtables is a facility for using readtables in a localized way.

Additionally, it also attempts to become a facility for using readtables in a modular way. In particular:

• it provides a macro to specify the content of a readtable at a glance;

• it makes it possible to use multiple inheritance between readtables.

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1.1 Links and Systems

The official repository is https://github.com/melisgl/named-readtables, and this document in available in various formats on https://fixnum.com for the latest version.

• [system] "named-readtables"

  • Version: 0.9
  • Description: Library that creates a namespace for readtables akin to the namespace of packages.
  • Licence: BSD, see LICENSE
  • Author: Tobias C. Rittweiler mailto:trittweiler@common-lisp.net
  • Maintainer: Gábor Melis mailto:mega@retes.hu
  • Mailto: mega@retes.hu
  • Homepage: https://github.com/melisgl/named-readtables
  • Bug tracker: https://github.com/melisgl/named-readtables/issues
  • Source control: GIT
  • Depends on: mgl-pax-bootstrap

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1.2 Acknowledgements

Thanks to Robert Goldman for making me want to write this library.

Thanks to Stephen Compall, Ariel Badichi, David Lichteblau, Bart Botta, David Crawford, and Pascal Costanza for being early adopters, providing comments and bugfixes.

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2 Overview

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2.1 Notes on the API

The API heavily imitates the API of packages. This has the nice property that any experienced Common Lisper will take it up without effort.

DEFREADTABLE              -   DEFPACKAGE
IN-READTABLE              -   IN-PACKAGE
MERGE-READTABLES-INTO     -   USE-PACKAGE
MAKE-READTABLE            -   MAKE-PACKAGE
UNREGISTER-READTABLE      -   DELETE-PACKAGE
RENAME-READTABLE          -   RENAME-PACKAGE
FIND-READTABLE            -   FIND-PACKAGE
READTABLE-NAME            -   PACKAGE-NAME
LIST-ALL-NAMED-READTABLES -   LIST-ALL-PACKAGES

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2.2 Important API idiosyncrasies

There are three major differences between the API of Named-Readtables, and the API of packages.

• Readtable names are symbols not strings.

  Time has shown that the fact that packages are named by strings causes severe headache because of the potential of package names colliding with each other.

  Hence, readtables are named by symbols lest to make the situation worse than it already is. Consequently, readtables named cl-oracle:sql-syntax and cl-mysql:sql-syntax can happily coexist next to each other. Or, taken to an extreme, scheme:syntax and elisp:syntax.

  If, for example to duly signify the importance of your cool readtable hack, you really think it deserves a global name, you can always resort to keywords.

• The inheritance is resolved statically, not dynamically.

  A package that uses another package will have access to all the other package's exported symbols, even to those that will be added after its definition. I.e. the inheritance is resolved at run-time, that is dynamically.

  Unfortunately, we cannot do the same for readtables in a portable manner.

  Therefore, we do not talk about "using" another readtable but about "merging" the other readtable's definition into the readtable we are going to define. I.e. the inheritance is resolved once at definition time, that is statically.

  (Such merging can more or less be implemented portably albeit at a certain cost. Most of the time, this cost manifests itself at the time a readtable is defined, i.e. once at compile-time, so it may not bother you. Nonetheless, we provide extra support for Sbcl, ClozureCL, and AllegroCL at the moment. Patches for your implementation of choice are welcome, of course.)

• defreadtable does not have compile-time effects.

  If you define a package via defpackage, you can make that package the currently active package for the subsequent compilation of the same file via in-package. The same is, however, not true for defreadtable and in-readtable for the following reason:

  It's unlikely that the need for special reader-macros arises for a problem which can be solved in just one file. Most often, you're going to define the reader macro functions, and set up the corresponding readtable in an extra file.

  If defreadtable had compile-time effects, you'd have to wrap each definition of a reader-macro function in an eval-when to make its definition available at compile-time. Because that's simply not the common case, defreadtable does not have a compile-time effect.

  If you want to use a readtable within the same file as its definition, wrap the defreadtable and the reader-macro function definitions in an explicit eval-when.

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2.3 Preregistered Readtables

• nil, :standard, and :common-lisp designate the standard readtable.

• :modern designates a case-preserving standard-readtable.

• :current designates the current readtable.

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2.4 Examples

(defreadtable elisp:syntax
   (:merge :standard)
   (:macro-char #\? #'elisp::read-character-literal t)
   (:macro-char #\[ #'elisp::read-vector-literal t)
   ...
   (:case :preserve))

(defreadtable scheme:syntax
   (:merge :standard)
   (:macro-char #\[ #'(lambda (stream char)
                         (read-delimited-list #\] stream)))
   (:macro-char #\# :dispatch)
   (:dispatch-macro-char #\# #\t #'scheme::read-#t)
   (:dispatch-macro-char #\# #\f #'scheme::read-#f)
   ...
   (:case :preserve))

(in-readtable elisp:syntax)

...

(in-readtable scheme:syntax)

...

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3 Reference

• [macro] defreadtable name &body options

  Define a new named readtable, whose name is given by the symbol name. Or, if a readtable is already registered under that name, redefine that one.

  The readtable can be populated using the following options:

  • If the first element of options is a string then it is associated with the readtable as in (setf (documentation name 'readtable) docstring).

  • (:merge readtable-designators+)

    Merge the macro character definitions from the readtables designated into the new readtable being defined as per merge-readtables-into. The copied options are :dispatch-macro-char, :macro-char and :syntax-from, but not readtable-case.

    If no :merge clause is given, an empty readtable is used. See make-readtable.

  • (:fuse readtable-designators+)

    Like :merge except:

    Error conditions of type reader-macro-conflict that are signaled during the merge operation will be silently continued. It follows that reader macros in earlier entries will be overwritten by later ones. For backward compatibility, :fuze is accepted as an alias of :fuse.

  • (:dispatch-macro-char macro-char sub-char function)

    Define a new sub character sub-char for the dispatching macro character macro-char, per set-dispatch-macro-character. You probably have to define macro-char as a dispatching macro character by the following option first.

  • (:macro-char macro-char function [non-terminating-p])

    Define a new macro character in the readtable, per set-macro-character. If function is the keyword :dispatch, macro-char is made a dispatching macro character, per make-dispatch-macro-character.

  • (:syntax-from from-readtable-designator from-char to-char)

    Set the character syntax of to-char in the readtable being defined to the same syntax as from-char as per set-syntax-from-char.

  • (:case case-mode)

    Defines the case sensitivity mode of the resulting readtable.

  Any number of option clauses may appear. The options are grouped by their type, but in each group the order the options appeared textually is preserved. The following groups exist and are executed in the following order: :merge and :fuse (one group), :case, :macro-char and :dispatch-macro-char (one group), finally :syntax-from.

  Notes:

  • The readtable is defined at load-time. If you want to have it available at compilation time -- say to use its reader-macros in the same file as its definition -- you have to wrap the defreadtable form in an explicit eval-when.

  • On redefinition, the target readtable is made empty first before it's refilled according to the clauses.

  • nil, :standard, :common-lisp, :modern, and :current are Preregistered Readtables names.

• [macro] in-readtable name

  Set *readtable* to the readtable referred to by the symbol name and return the readtable. This may signal readtable-does-not-exist.

  • Everything in-readtable does is also performed at compile time if the call appears as a top level form.

  • The effects of in-readtable are file-local since both compile-file and load rebind *readtable*.

• [function] make-readtable &optional name &key merge

  Creates and returns a new readtable under the specified name.

  merge takes a list of named-readtable-designators and specifies the readtables the new readtable is created from. (See the :merge clause of defreadtable for details.)

  If merge is nil, an empty readtable is used instead.

  If name is not given, an anonymous empty readtable is returned.

  Note: An empty readtable is a readtable where each character's syntax is the same as in the standard readtable except that each macro character has been made a constituent. Basically: whitespace stays whitespace, everything else is constituent.

• [function] merge-readtables-into result-readtable &rest named-readtables

  Copy macro character definitions of each readtable in named-readtables into result-readtable.

  If a macro character appears in more than one of the readtables, i.e. if a conflict is discovered during the merge, an error of type reader-macro-conflict is signaled.

  The copied options are :dispatch-macro-char, :macro-char and :syntax-from, but not readtable-case.

• [function] find-readtable name

  Looks for the readtable specified by name and returns it if it is found. Returns nil otherwise.

• [function] ensure-readtable name &optional default

  Looks up the readtable specified by name and returns it if it's found. If it is not found, it registers the readtable designated by default under the name represented by name; or if no default argument is given, it signals an error of type readtable-does-not-exist instead.

• [function] rename-readtable old-name new-name

  Replaces the associated name of the readtable designated by old-name with new-name. If a readtable is already registered under new-name, an error of type readtable-does-already-exist is signaled.

• [function] readtable-name named-readtable

  Returns the name of the readtable designated by named-readtable, or nil.

• [function] register-readtable name readtable

  Associate readtable with name. Returns the readtable.

• [function] unregister-readtable named-readtable

  Remove the association of named-readtable. Returns t if successfull, nil otherwise.

• [function] copy-named-readtable named-readtable

  Like copy-readtable but takes a named-readtable-designator as argument.

• [function] list-all-named-readtables

  Returns a list of all registered readtables. The returned list is guaranteed to be fresh, but may contain duplicates.

• [type] named-readtable-designator

  Either a symbol or a readtable itself.

• [condition] readtable-error error

• [condition] reader-macro-conflict readtable-error

  Continuable.

  This condition is signaled during the merge process if a reader macro (be it a macro character or the sub character of a dispatch macro character) is present in the both source and the target readtable and the two respective reader macro functions differ.

• [condition] readtable-does-already-exist readtable-error

  Continuable.

• [condition] readtable-does-not-exist readtable-error

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4 Indices

Referrer definition type abbreviations:

• f: for definitions in the function namespace (macros, compiler macros and also methods)
• t: DEFTYPEs, classes, conditions, structs
• d: documentation sections and glossary terms
• l: definitions of definition types
• s: ASDF systems
• p: packages
• n: named readtables
• v: special variables and constants
• r: restarts
• ?: other

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4.1 Function and Macro Index

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4.2 Type Index

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4.3 Misc Index

[Generated 2026-07-19T23:46:15Z]