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Re: printing structures



Separating out I/O for for inter-program communication and the
user-interface is a good idea, but your proposal puts the burden on
inter-program communication ("wrap this one form around the portion of
your program which does I/O.") rather than on the user interface.

Wouldn't it be simpler to suggest that implementors of a
"top-level-loop" might want to bind a separate I/O environment for
reading and printing (but not for execution)?  

Back onto the original discussion: we added a variable *print-structure*
which controlled how structures were printed by the default structure
printer, in the same way that *print-array* controls array output. I'm
reluctant to propose additions to the language, but if one was wanted,
this seems like a logical choice.