Printing Characters (ANSI and GNU Common Lisp Document)

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#### 22.1.3.7 Printing Characters

When printer escaping is disabled,

a character prints as itself; it is sent directly to the output stream.

When printer escaping is enabled,

then `#\` syntax is used.

When the printer types out the name of a character, it uses the same table as the `#\` reader macro would use; therefore any character name that is typed out is acceptable as input (in that implementation). If a non-graphic character has a standardized name_5, that name is preferred over non-standard names for printing in `#\` notation. For the graphic standard characters, the character itself is always used for printing in `#\` notation—even if the character also has a name_5.

For details about the `#\` reader macro, see Sharpsign Backslash.