Overview of The Lisp Printer (ANSI and GNU Common Lisp Document)

Next: Printer Dispatching, Previous: The Lisp Printer, Up: The Lisp Printer

#### 22.1.1 Overview of The Lisp Printer

Common Lisp provides a representation of most objects in the form of printed text called the printed representation. Functions such as print take an object and send the characters of its printed representation to a stream. The collection of routines that does this is known as the (Common Lisp) printer.

Reading a printed representation typically produces an object that is equal to the originally printed object.