couple of i/o questions

[<serafini@ra-iris9.arc.nasa.gov>]

1) is there a way to switch the :element-type of an open file stream that has
been read using read-byte?  The obvious solution is to do
(file-position)(close)(open)(file-position old-position).
I'd prefer something a little cleaner

1b) language question: does setf work on (file-position)? should it?

2) My understanding of *default-pathname-defaults* is that it is used both for 
opening files and loading files.  For real world applications, you often open data
files that should default to the user's local directory, but you load code
files from a system-defined directory.  To me, these are fundamentally
different operations, and shouldn't use the same default variable.  GNU Emacs
has a variable called load-path, which provides a search list to look for code,
and a different variable (with a different value in each buffer) of the default
path to get data (ie, files to be edited) from.  I'd like to implement
something like this, possibly by wrapping a function around load that locally
binds *default-pathname-defaults*.  My question is: is this a good idea? is
(load) the right function to change? Will it work for :load and :compile
commands as well?

-David

--
David B. Serafini			serafini@ra-iris.arc.nasa.gov
Rose Engineering and Research, Inc.	serafini@nas.nasa.gov
NASA/Ames Research Center MS 227-6	...!ames!amelia!serafini
Moffett Field, CA 94035			(415)604-6233