Hello Quizzers, I'm a newbie in Lisp (have already finished the ANSI Common Lisp book, made some tries with programming as well, and I'm searching the answer to this question I have : could it be possible to "enhance" the reader in order to have in lisp "enhanced strings". That is : by just doing something once at the beginning of a lisp file (some call, ...), being able to have all the strings replaced by another string (or another form). Something like this : ;;; beginning of file (enhanced-strings:start) ... ... (defun some-function (x y) "This returned string is an enhanced string and the value of x and y will be replaced 'a la ruby' : x=${x}, y =${y}") You see what I mean .... This could be an interesting quiz, but first of all, will an ANSI compliant implementation let redefine the reader to alter the meaning of strings ? I know I can add macro characters, play with macro character dispatching functions, ... but what about "overriding" the reader to intercept strings and change them, as for the above example, with : (format t "This returned string is an enhanced string and the value of x and y will be replaced 'a la ruby' : x=~a, y =~a") x y) thanks in advance for your answers, both on feasibility and/or complete answers to this "unofficial" quiz ;-) And oh, if I definitely bothered you by sending this message on the wrong list, please let me know what would be the most natural list/newsgroup to post this message on ? Thanks in advance, A lisp beginner, -- Laurent PETIT