The ':white-space' keyword is an entry that is used in the *readtable* system variable that contains XLISP's data structures relating to the processing of characters from the user [or files] and read-macro expansions. The existance of the ':white-space' keyword means that the specified character may be skipped over. The system defines that 'tab', 'space', 'return' and 'line-feed' are ':white-space' characters.
;; define a function to look in a table ;; and print out any white-space characters (defun look-at (table) (dotimes (ch 127) (prog ((entry (aref table ch))) (case entry (nil nil) (:constituent nil) (:white-space (print ch)) (t nil)))) (terpri)) (look-at *readtable*) ; prints 9 - tab ; 10 - newline ; 12 - formfeed ; 13 - return ; 32 - space
Caution: If you experiment with
See the
:white-space
keyword in the