From: Jonathon McKitrick
Subject: Vertical bars and the lisp reader
Date: 
Message-ID: <1146864565.064403.15390@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com>
I've not seen hardly anything about the vertical bar notation.  Would
someone sum up, or point me to a document that explains it?

From: Bill Atkins
Subject: Re: Vertical bars and the lisp reader
Date: 
Message-ID: <87slnonnwc.fsf@rpi.edu>
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:

> I've not seen hardly anything about the vertical bar notation.  Would
> someone sum up, or point me to a document that explains it?

It interns a symbol literally, without any upcasing or any other kind
of transformation.  It also lets you use symbols that would otherwise
be illegal - e.g. '|eee)ee| which would fail if not enclosed within
vertical bars.

Frank Buss's link to the Hyperspec can help.

-- 
This is a song that took me ten years to live and two years to write.
 - Bob Dylan
From: Aaron Brown
Subject: Re: Vertical bars and the lisp reader
Date: 
Message-ID: <1146883749.834745.74220@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>
Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

> I've not seen hardly anything about the vertical bar
> notation.  Would someone sum up, or point me to a document
> that explains it?

http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/Body/sec_2-1-4-5.html
http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/Body/sec_2-1-4-5-1.html

Surrounding a symbol (or part of one) with vertical bars
prevents upcasing and allows the inclusion of characters
that normally couldn't be in a symbol.  To include a
vertical bar or a backslash, precede it with a backslash.

[1]> (symbol-name '|foo|)
"foo"
[2]> (symbol-name '|)|)
")"
[3]> (symbol-name 'f|o|o)
"FoO"
[4]> (symbol-name '|foo\|bar|)
"foo|bar"
[5]> (symbol-name '|foo\\bar|)
"foo\\bar"
[6]> (symbol-name '|foo"bar|)
"foo\"bar"

-- 
Aaron
From: Frank Buss
Subject: Re: Vertical bars and the lisp reader
Date: 
Message-ID: <1irg1s3vcq08c.1ubun3a77z06l$.dlg@40tude.net>
Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

> I've not seen hardly anything about the vertical bar notation.  Would
> someone sum up, or point me to a document that explains it?

Do you mean the Sharpsign Vertical-Bar reader macro?

http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/Body/sec_2-4-8-19.html

-- 
Frank Buss, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de