ANSI Common Lisp  22 Printer 22.2 The Lisp Pretty Printer 22.2.1 Pretty Printer Concepts
22.2.1.3 Compiling Format StringsA format string is essentially a program in a special-purpose language that performs printing, and that is interpreted by the function format. The formatter macro provides the efficiency of using a compiled function to do that same printing but without losing the textual compactness of format strings.A format control is either a format string or a function that was returned by the the formatter macro. |