en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconicity
2 corrections found
Pierce indeed used the term "icon" in his [Semiotic Theory](/wiki/Semiotic_theory_of_Charles_Sanders_Peirce#II._Icon,_index,_symbol "Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce").
The philosopher's surname is **Peirce**, not **Pierce**. The article correctly names him in the previous sentence, then misspells his name in this sentence.
Full reasoning
The sentence refers to the American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce, whose surname is spelled P-e-i-r-c-e.
This is not just a stylistic variation: the article itself correctly identifies him in the immediately preceding sentence as Charles Sanders Peirce, and standard reference works on semiotics use that spelling as well. So the sentence is factually incorrect in naming the person as Pierce.
1 source
- Peirce's Theory of Signs (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Peirce's Theory of Signs ... Peirce's Sign Theory, or Semiotic, is an account of signification, representation, reference and meaning.
(print-to-string expression)
`print-to-string` is not a standard Common Lisp function. In standard Common Lisp, the string-producing printer functions are `write-to-string`, `prin1-to-string`, and `princ-to-string`.
Full reasoning
This example is written in Common Lisp syntax (setf, third, print-to-string, read-from-string, uppercase symbol printing, etc.), so the relevant standard is the Common Lisp specification.
The Common Lisp HyperSpec lists the standard functions for printing an object to a string as:
write-to-stringprin1-to-stringprinc-to-string
It separately defines print as a stream-printing function, not a ...-to-string function. In standard Common Lisp there is no standard print-to-string function.
That makes the article's example misleading: as written, it presents print-to-string as if it were a normal Lisp/Common Lisp primitive. If the goal is to obtain the readable printed representation shown in the example, the standard Common Lisp choices are write-to-string or prin1-to-string instead.
2 sources
- CLHS: Function WRITE-TO-STRING, PRIN1-TO-STRING...
Function WRITE-TO-STRING, PRIN1-TO-STRING, PRINC-TO-STRING ... write-to-string, prin1-to-string, and princ-to-string are used to create a string consisting of the printed representation of object.
- CLHS: Function WRITE, PRIN1, PRINT, PPRINT...
Function WRITE, PRIN1, PRINT, PPRINT, PRINC ... print is just like prin1 except that the printed representation of object is preceded by a newline and followed by a space.