I/O proposal

[CPH%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA]

    Date: Thursday, 14 March 1985  10:52-EST
    From: David Bartley <Bartley%ti-csl.csnet at csnet-relay.arpa>

    -- DISPLAY-CHAR seems to be a redundant, restricted form of DISPLAY. Since
    DISPLAY is essential, DISPLAY-CHAR should be dropped.

I don't agree.  I think that it is good to have a balanced pair of
procedures for doing character-level I/O.

    -- I oppose the term "stream" and thus the names STREAM?, CURRENT-INPUT-
    STREAM, etc., for the reasons Gerry gave.  We use "port".

Ditto, except that we use "stream" and will cheerfully change it.

    -- With my Pascal (and English) background, I can't help but think of
    features named with "with", like WITH-INPUT-FROM-FILE, as syntax, not
    procedures.  [Did you notice how I began the previous sentence?]  I would
    prefer a special form: (WITH-INPUT-FROM-FILE <file-name> exp ...).  This is
    more consistent with CL's macro WITH-INPUT-FROM-STRING.  The same goes for
    WITH-OUTPUT-FROM-FILE.

I disagree -- proliferation of special forms is a communicable disease.