Re: read-line

[eliot%winnie.Princeton.EDU@Princeton.EDU (eliot handelman)]

I have had the same problem that Wang describes, and mentioned this months
ago. If READ-LINE is the first read-function encountered in a program it
invariably returns "". Evidently there is a \#Newline left over from having
hit return at top-level. Here's an example:


Starts dribbling to let (1988/7/21, 10:54:53).
NIL

> (setq a (read-line))
""
; I didn't get a chance to type anything
> a
""

> (setq a (read-line) b (read-line))
hi there
"hi there"

> a
""

> b
"hi there"

This is on 4.3 Unix.
The obvious solution is to include a piece of code that checks, at top level,
whether there is in fact a hanging newline and then disposes of if so. But
it's ugly.

-Eliot