reading numbers as symbols

[hunter@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (Larry Hunter)]

Perhaps I should have been clearer the first go round.  I got several
responses to my question about reading potnums as symbols like this:

   Wouldn't it work to do the read with a readtable where all the numbers
   were given the same syntax class as alphabetic characters?

The answer is no.  Digits ARE alphabetic characters -- their interpretation
as numbers depends only on the radix (*read-base*) value.  So

<cl> (set-syntax-from-char #\1 #\A)
T
<cl> (set-syntax-from-char #\0 #\A)
T
<cl> (read-from-string "00001")
1
5
<cl> (read-from-string "0000A")
0000A
5
<cl> (let ((*read-base* 16)) (read-from-string "0000A"))
10
5
<cl>