What does the A in ~A in format stand for?

Question

With format you can use, among other things, ~S and ~A.

While the S in ~S is for S-expression, what does the A in ~A stand for? Apparently it outputs without escaping, but I was wondering what the letter actually means…?

Barytes

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this shows no research effort and it is answered in the title of the relevant documentation 22.3.4.1 Tilde A: Aesthetic. – Frei

Although I'm the author of the question, I have to agree. I didn't think of the hyper spec and I didn't come up with an idea how to Google for the term. Maybe I should have thought about it a minute longer. Sorry for that :-( – Barytes

It's an honest mistake, and it's much easier to see things in hindsight. That said, it's usually a good idea to search the HyperSpec (or whatever relevant manual for the tool/language at hand), since many of these things are laid out pretty clearly. E.g., how would someone even know about ~a if it weren't documented somewhere? That doesn't necessarily mean that the documentation will explain the name, but it's really the first place to start. – Frei

Answer 1

It stands for Aesthetic. A-formatted output is not escaped. See http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/22_cda.htm

Incidentally, S stands for Standard rather than S-expression.

Pteranodon