Programming Challenge Numbers to Text?

[Jonathan Ellis]

On Fri, 05 May 2006 14:04:38 -0600, "Shane Hathaway"
<shane at hathawaymix.org> said:
> plug.org at 2nerds.com wrote:
> > This lisp expression:
> > 
> >   (format t "~r~%~r~%~r~%~r~%~r~%" 1 15 91283 4918239 2147483647)
> 
> What does that really mean, and how would I find out?  What would happen 
> if I used only four "~r~%" sequences instead of five?  What about i18n? 
>   This looks very obtuse to me, and I would consider it a mark *against* 
> lisp.  I'd much rather use a function with a name like "spell_int" than 
> a series of symbols.  Is your syntax actually helpful in some way I'm 
> not seeing?

I parse that as, the function name is format and the ~r~% sequences are
like %s in printf-style formatting.  So if he only had four it would
barf because 5 numbers are being passed.
-- 
C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.  --Scott McKay