What's the difference between write, print, pprint, princ, and prin1?

printing output lisp common-lisp
Electric Coffee picture Electric Coffee · Nov 3, 2013 · Viewed 10.2k times · Source

I'm getting into some Lisp, and I've come across various different functions that to me appear to be doing the same thing... Namely printing to console... So what exactly is the difference between all those different functions?

Answer

Rainer Joswig picture Rainer Joswig · Nov 3, 2013

This is answered here: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_wr_pr.htm

  • write is the general entry point to the Lisp printer.
  • prin1 produces output suitable for input to read.
  • princ is just like prin1 except that the output has no escape characters. princ is intended to look good to people, while output from prin1 is intended to be acceptable for the function read.
  • print is just like prin1 except that the printed representation of object is preceded by a newline and followed by a space.
  • pprint produces pretty output.

Related questions

Sybase - Setting console output on for printing log statements

Does somebody know how to turn the console output on in Sybase. The usual statement like print 'Hello', is not working for me, it just says command executed successfully without printing the log statement.

Read More
What's the simplest way to print a Java array?

In Java, arrays don't override toString(), so if you try to print one directly, you get the className + '@' + the hex of the hashCode of the array, as defined by Object.toString(): int[] intArray = new int[] {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}; System.out.println(…

Read More
How can I write to the console in PHP?

Is it possible write a string or log into the console? What I mean Just like in JSP, if we print something like system.out.println("some"), it will be there at the console, not at a page.

Read More