Re: In reply to TK: Character Objects (what else!)

[DLW at MIT-AI]

Suppose someone has a program that creates a data structure whose
format is a list of alternating characters and fixnums.  He then runs
the program, which returns such a list, and he SETQ's FOO to the list.
Now he types FOO at top level.  It would take an awfully clever
printer/compiler collaberation to figure out how to print this, if
characters are fixnums.  I don't think characters can ever be printed
as such without another hardware data type.  (I also think that in this
case we should forego the debuggability in order to not put in the new
data type, at least on the LispM.)