Invistra: a portable and extensible Common Lisp FORMAT implementation

The invistra system provides a portable implementation of Common Lisp FORMAT. It was initially part of SICL but has been extracted and the missing required features completed.

Requirements

ABCL, Clasp, ECL, and SBCL is the only current implementations that this system has been tested on.

In addition to a clone of this repository in a location that is discoverable by ASDF you will also need a clone of nontrivial-gray-streams, Incless and Inravina.

Usage

The core functionality is in the invistra package, but the Common Lisp-like interface of format and formmatter is in the invistra-extrinsic package and system. To call format try the following in SBCL:

* (asdf:load-system :invistra-extrinsic)
T
* (invistra-extrinsic:format t "Wibble: ~a~%"
                             :quux)
Wibble: QUUX
NIL

Invistra can also replace an implementation's FORMAT implementation. This is done with the invistra-shim system.

* (asdf:load-system :invistra-shim)
T
* (format t "Wibble: ~a~%" :quux)
Wibble: QUUX
NIL