how to print and store the " character in strings [SOLVED]

[punchcard]

I have been looking through the Lisp 3rd edition and trying to find some way on the net... is there a way I can print the " character or store it as a part of the data in a string?


what I want to be able to do is ( " The man said "hello world" and went to his car. " ).

Is there some way to print a character code by code number?

*update

I actually later found the part of Lisp 3rd ed that covered this - it was buried in the Classes and Generic Functions chapter (c14, p191). Always the way when you are looking for somthing else the thing you were looking for first turns up.

[edgar-rft]

The usual trick is the same as in most other programming langauges, just simply escape double-quotes with backslashes:

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CL-USER> (princ "The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car.")
The man said "hello world" and went to his car.       ; printed value using PRINC
"The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."   ; returned value

CL-USER> (prin1 "The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car.")
"The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."   ; printed value using PRIN1
"The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."   ; returned value

... or in FORMAT syntax:

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CL-USER> (format t "~a~%" "The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car.")
The man said "hello world" and went to his car.       ; printed value "~a"
NIL                                                   ; returned value

CL-USER> (format t "~s~%" "The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car.")
"The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."   ; printed value "~s"
NIL                                                   ; returned value

This also works if you store the string in a variable:

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CL-USER> (let ((my-string "The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."))
           (format t "~a~%" my-string)
           (format t "~s~%" my-string))
The man said "hello world" and went to his car.       ; printed value "~a"
"The man said \"hello world\" and went to his car."   ; printed value "~s"
NIL                                                   ; returned value

In case of doubt see PRIN1, PRINC, and FORMAT.

[punchcard]

Thank you! thats great.