SAVEFILE

[RWK at MIT-MC (Robert W. Kerns)]

    Date: 4 June 1979 01:12-EDT
    From: Kent M. Pitman <KMP at MIT-MC>
    To:   JPG, RWK
    cc:   EJS, ELLEN

    By the way, I tried opening SAVEFILE in MANLEY's macsyma. Got the file munged
    up so closed it and tried re-opening it. That lost. The file wouldn't open
    (did manage to get it CNAMEF'd ok, tho' - by picking names for the file that
    I was sure were on the obarray - creating even one new symbol gave a major
    restart!) ... Fortunately, I had come equipped with a TELNET wallpaper 
    file open and just ended up printing all values on the tty and editting the
    wallpaper file later.... I would be interested to know why when I did
    (OPEN SAVEFILE 'OUT) the second time, it returned T but [1] Didn't open the
    file, [2] Didn't err out at all, and [3] said losing output file specs when
    I tried printing into the file...  Bob?
    -kmp
Because it is initially opened in FIXNUM mode.  This would seem to violate the
LISP documentation in .INFO.;LISP NEWS which claims that opening tends to reset
the file array, and that the default mode is ASCII, not FIXNUM.  Jeff, why is
it originally opened as FIXNUM?