LispWorks User Guide and Reference Manual > 22 Internationalization > 22.2 Character and String types > 22.2.3 String types

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22.2.3.1 String types at runtime

The type string (and hence simple-string ) is defined by ANSI Common Lisp to be a union of all the character array types. This makes a call like

(coerce s 'simple-string)

ambiguous because it needs to select a concrete type (such as simple-base-string or simple-text-string).

When LispWorks is running with *default-character-element-type* set to base-char , it expects that you will want strings with element type base-char , so functions like coerce treat references to simple-string as if they were (simple-array base-char (*)) .

If you call set-default-character-element-type with a larger character type, then simple-string becomes a union of the array types that are subtypes of that character type.


LispWorks User Guide and Reference Manual - 22 Dec 2009

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