[no subject]

[DICK at MIT-AI (Richard C. Waters)]

 Refering to your comment on my comment (below).  THere are two probems:

1. granted that 501 "is the only control A on the lisp machine",
there is a character 1 that occures in files, and whose common name
in general use in the world is control-A.  One thing that # was supposed
to do for you is to allow you a way to rrefer to unusual characters without
having to put them into your program text.  when you say that I can get 1
by typeing #/^A, I assume you mean that I should be typing an actual ^A
(ie down arrow) in the file which defeats the purpose.

2. Much more to the point is the question of maclisp compatability.
Is this seriously being attempted or not?  If it is, then it is a problem that
#^A is 1 in maclisp, and 501 on lispm.  (I realize that the deaper problem
is that holding down the shift key, and hitting A is 1 in maclisp and 501
on the lispmachine.)  It certainly would be nice if there was some clean
way of generating he basic ascii character codes that was compatable between
the two machines.

    Date: 12 October 1980 16:55-EDT
    From: Alan Bawden <ALAN at MIT-MC>
    To: FORPAS at MIT-AI
    cc: BUG-LISPM at MIT-AI

	Date: 11 OCT 1980 2046-EDT
	From: FORPAS at MIT-AI (Richard C. Waters)

	#^A reads in as 501, instead of 1.  if I had wanted 501,
	I would have typed #/A.

    #^A means control-A.  "That character that is generated by holding
    down the control key and typing A".  In MacLisp that is the number 1,
    on a LispMachine that is the number 501.  There is no other control-A
    on a LispMachine.

    Indeed 501 can also be generated by #/A.  That means "A with the control
    bit set".  This is the fixnum 301 in MacLisp.

    If you want the number 1, then you mean the LispMachine character
    called "down-arrow".  The way to get this is #/
.