CLHS: Glossary-Section A

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A

absolute adj. 1. (of a time) representing a specific point in time. 2. (of a pathname) representing a specific position in a directory hierarchy. See relative.

access n., v.t. 1. v.t. (a place, or array) to read[1] or write[1] the value of the place or an element of the array. 2. n. (of a place) an attempt to access[1] the value of the place.

accessibility n. the state of being accessible.

accessible adj. 1. (of an object) capable of being referenced. 2. (of shared slots or local slots in an instance of a class) having been defined by the class of the instance or inherited from a superclass of that class. 3. (of a symbol in a package) capable of being referenced without a package prefix when that package is current, regardless of whether the symbol is present in that package or is inherited.

accessor n. an operator that performs an access. See reader and writer.

active adj. 1. (of a handler, a restart, or a catch tag) having been established but not yet disestablished. 2. (of an element of an array) having an index that is greater than or equal to zero, but less than the fill pointer (if any). For an array that has no fill pointer, all elements are considered active.

actual adjustability n. (of an array) a generalized boolean that is associated with the array, representing whether the array is actually adjustable. See also expressed adjustability and adjustable-array-p.

actual argument n. Trad. an argument.

actual array element type n. (of an array) the type for which the array is actually specialized, which is the upgraded array element type of the expressed array element type of the array. See the function array-element-type.

actual complex part type n. (of a complex) the type in which the real and imaginary parts of the complex are actually represented, which is the upgraded complex part type of the expressed complex part type of the complex.

actual parameter n. Trad. an argument.

actually adjustable adj. (of an array) such that adjust-array can adjust its characteristics by direct modification. A conforming program may depend on an array being actually adjustable only if either that array is known to have been expressly adjustable or if that array has been explicitly tested by adjustable-array-p.

adjustability n. (of an array) 1. expressed adjustability. 2. actual adjustability.

adjustable adj. (of an array) 1. expressly adjustable. 2. actually adjustable.

after method n. a method having the qualifier `:after`.

alist ['ay,list], n. an association list.

alphabetic n., adj. 1. adj. (of a character) being one of the standard characters `A` through `Z` or `a` through `z`, or being any implementation-defined character that has case, or being some other graphic character defined by the implementation to be alphabetic[1]. 2. a. n. one of several possible constituent traits of a character. For details, see Section 2.1.4.1 (Constituent Characters) and Section 2.2 (Reader Algorithm). b. adj. (of a character) being a character that has syntax type constituent in the current readtable and that has the constituent trait alphabetic[2a]. See Figure 2-8.

alphanumeric adj. (of a character) being either an alphabetic[1] character or a numeric character.

ampersand n. the standard character that is called ``ampersand'' (`&`). See Figure 2-5.

anonymous adj. 1. (of a class or function) having no name 2. (of a restart) having a name of nil.

apparently uninterned adj. having a home package of nil. (An apparently uninterned symbol might or might not be an uninterned symbol. Uninterned symbols have a home package of nil, but symbols which have been uninterned from their home package also have a home package of nil, even though they might still be interned in some other package.)

applicable adj. 1. (of a handler) being an applicable handler. 2. (of a method) being an applicable method. 3. (of a restart) being an applicable restart.

applicable handler n. (for a condition being signaled) an active handler for which the associated type contains the condition.

applicable method n. (of a generic function called with arguments) a method of the generic function for which the arguments satisfy the parameter specializers of that method. See Section 7.6.6.1.1 (Selecting the Applicable Methods).

applicable restart n. 1. (for a condition) an active handler for which the associated test returns true when given the condition as an argument. 2. (for no particular condition) an active handler for which the associated test returns true when given nil as an argument.

apply v.t. (a function to a list) to call the function with arguments that are the elements of the list. ``Applying the function + to a list of integers returns the sum of the elements of that list.''

argument n. 1. (of a function) an object which is offered as data to the function when it is called. 2. (of a format control) a format argument.

argument evaluation order n. the order in which arguments are evaluated in a function call. ``The argument evaluation order for Common Lisp is left to right.'' See Section 3.1 (Evaluation).

argument precedence order n. the order in which the arguments to a generic function are considered when sorting the applicable methods into precedence order.

around method n. a method having the qualifier `:around`.

array n. an object of type array, which serves as a container for other objects arranged in a Cartesian coordinate system.

array element type n. (of an array) 1. a type associated with the array, and of which all elements of the array are constrained to be members. 2. the actual array element type of the array. 3. the expressed array element type of the array.

array total size n. the total number of elements in an array, computed by taking the product of the dimensions of the array. (The size of a zero-dimensional array is therefore one.)

assign v.t. (a variable) to change the value of the variable in a binding that has already been established. See the special operator setq.

association list n. a list of conses representing an association of keys with values, where the car of each cons is the key and the cdr is the value associated with that key.

asterisk n. the standard character that is variously called ``asterisk'' or ``star'' (`*`). See Figure 2-5.

at-sign n. the standard character that is variously called ``commercial at'' or ``at sign'' (`@`). See Figure 2-5.

atom n. any object that is not a cons. ``A vector is an atom.''

atomic adj. being an atom. ``The number 3, the symbol `foo`, and nil are atomic.''

atomic type specifier n. a type specifier that is atomic. For every atomic type specifier, x, there is an equivalent compound type specifier with no arguments supplied, `(`x`)`.

attribute n. (of a character) a program-visible aspect of the character. The only standardized attribute of a character is its code[2], but implementations are permitted to have additional implementation-defined attributes. See Section 13.1.3 (Character Attributes). ``An implementation that support fonts might make font information an attribute of a character, while others might represent font information separately from characters.''

aux variable n. a variable that occurs in the part of a lambda list that was introduced by `&aux`. Unlike all other variables introduced by a lambda-list, aux variables are not parameters.

auxiliary method n. a member of one of two sets of methods (the set of primary methods is the other) that form an exhaustive partition of the set of methods on the method's generic function. How these sets are determined is dependent on the method combination type; see Section 7.6.2 (Introduction to Methods).

The following X3J13 cleanup issues, not part of the specification, apply to this section:

- FORMAT-STRING-ARGUMENTS:SPECIFY
- CONDITION-RESTARTS:PERMIT-ASSOCIATION

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