ANSI Common Lisp   2 Syntax   2.4 Standard Macro Characters

2.4.5 Double-Quote

Syntax: "<<text>>"

The double-quote is used to begin and end a string. When a double-quote is encountered, characters are read from the input stream and accumulated until another double-quote is encountered. If a single escape character is seen, the single escape character is discarded, the next character is accumulated, and accumulation continues. The accumulated characters up to but not including the matching double-quote are made into a simple string and returned. It is implementation-dependent which attributes of the accumulated characters are removed in this process.

Examples of the use of the double-quote character are in the next figure.

Note that to place a single escape character or a double-quote into a string, such a character must be preceded by a single escape character. Note, too, that a multiple escape character need not be quoted by a single escape character within a string.

For information on how the Lisp printer prints strings, see Section 22.1.3.4 Printing Strings.