FORMAT

[gls at MIT-MC (Guy L. Steele, Jr.)]

CC: (BUG lispm) at MIT-AI

Unfortunately FORMAT has a gross incompatibility between LISPM
and MacLISP, namely the treatment of T as the stream argument.
In MacLISP NEWIO, T has standardly denoted the value of TYO
(i.e. the tty) (subject to ^W), while NIL has meant the "standard
output" (i.e. TYO subject to ^W plus OUTFILES subject to ^R).
Now to FORMAT, NIL means "make a string", so that can't be used
as in NEWIO.  So on LISPM T means "standard output".

My suggestion is that the MacLISP FORMAT be changed so that T
is specially recoggnized and caused to mean "standard output"
(by being changed to a NIL file specification).  The theory is
that most programs could then be mmade compatible between LISPM
and MacLISP.  If it is necessary in MacLISP to get the effect
of T as a file specification, (T) can be used instead.