+ Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@math.ntnu.no>: | I figure the problem is with the debugger trying to print a string | containing binary data, and somehow not using the UTF-8 encoding to | do it. But if so, one might think that the following test would have the same effect, but it doesn't. (error (make-string 1 :initial-element (code-char #x81))) This version of the test, however ... (let ((x (make-string 128))) (loop for i below 128 do (setf (char x i) (code-char (+ 128 i)))) (error x)) ... produced the following message in the minibuffer on the first attempt: (I fished it out of the *Messages* buffer afterwards) ; pipelined request... (swank:listener-eval "(let ((x (make-string 128))) (loop for i below 128 do (setf (char x i) (code-char (+ 128 i)))) (error x)) ") and on the second attempt, it again killed sbcl and emacs when I selected the restart 0 (abort slime request). This ought to be easier to reproduce and debug than my asdf-install example. Oh, I forgot to mention my OS earlier: MacOS X 10.4.6. - Harald