RE: Illegal characters/ .LSP files

[Johann Petrak <johann@mail4.ai.univie.ac.at>]

LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com writes:
 > Jeff Bishop <jbishop@nwu.edu> asked:
 > 
 > I have found that whenever I edit any Lisp files on the OS/2 system 
 > editor (or any of several other text editors which run on the same 
 > platform) I get an error message when I attempt to load them.  It says 
 > ;; Loading file C:\Common Lisp\chapter5.lsp ...
 > *** - READ from #<STRING-CHAR-FILE-STREAM #"C:\\Common 
 > Lisp\\chapter5.lsp">: ill
 > egal character #\
 > 
 > I *suspect* it might have something to do with ^M at the end of a line, 
 > since I have experienced no such problems with the Unix version.  Does 
 > anyone know how to edit the files to make them readable in a DOS, 
 > Windows, or OS/2 environment?
 > 
 > 	This problem is caused by the End Of File character (Ctrl-Z
 > 	in DOS and OS/2). You can avoid it by using the TE/2 editor
 > 	(download from ftp-os2.cdrom.com or nic.funet.fi), which does
 > 	NOT write Ctrl-Z at the end of files.
 > 
 > 	I think GNU Emacs will do the same service, but I haven't 
 > 	tested it yet.

Another way is to tell the LISP reader to treat Ctrl-Z as whitespace:
	(set-syntax-from-char #\Code26 #\Space)

Johann Petrak,                           Email: johann@ai.univie.ac.at
                                         Phone:       +43/222/533-61-12
Austrian Research Institute for                         Schottengasse 3
Artificial Intelligence                          A-1010 Vienna, Austria