|  | ANSI Common Lisp  21 Streams  21.2 Dictionary of Streams 
 
| 21.2.27  file-position | Function |  
 Syntax:
file-position
stream
   position 
file-position
stream position-spec
   success-p 
Arguments and Values:
stream - a stream.
position-spec - a file position designator.
 
position - a file position or nil.
 
success-p - a generalized boolean.
 
Description:
Returns or changes the current position within a stream.
When position-spec is not supplied,
file-position returns the current file position in the stream,
or nil if this cannot be determined.
 
When position-spec is supplied,
the file position in stream is set to that file position (if possible).
file-position returns true 
if the repositioning is performed successfully,
or false if it is not.
 
An integer returned by file-position of one argument 
should be acceptable as position-spec for use with the same file.
 
For a character file,
performing a single read-char or write-char operation
may cause the file position to be increased by more than 1 because of
character-set translations (such as translating between the Common Lisp #\Newline character and an external ASCII
carriage-return/line-feed sequence) and other aspects of the
implementation.  For a binary file, every read-byte 
or write-byte
operation increases the file position by 1.
 
Examples:
 (defun tester ()
   (let ((noticed '()) file-written)
     (flet ((notice (x) (push x noticed) x))
       (with-open-file (s "test.bin" 
                          :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8)
                          :direction :output
                          :if-exists :error)
          (notice (file-position s)) ;1
          (write-byte 5 s) 
          (write-byte 6 s)
          (let ((p (file-position s)))
            (notice p) ;2
            (notice (when p (file-position s (1- p))))) ;3
          (write-byte 7 s)
          (notice (file-position s)) ;4
          (setq file-written (truename s)))
        (with-open-file (s file-written
                           :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8)
                           :direction :input)
          (notice (file-position s)) ;5
          (let ((length (file-length s)))
            (notice length) ;6
            (when length
              (dotimes (i length)
                (notice (read-byte s)))))) ;7,...
        (nreverse noticed))))
 tester
 (tester)  (0 2 T 2 0 2 5 7)
OR  (0 2 NIL 3 0 3 5 6 7)
OR  (NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL)
Side Effects:
When the position-spec argument is supplied,
the file position in the stream might be moved.
Affected By:
The value returned by file-position increases monotonically
as input or output operations are performed.  
Exceptional Situations:
If position-spec is supplied, but is too large or otherwise inappropriate, 
an error is signaled.
See Also:
file-length,
file-string-length,
open
Notes:
Implementations that have character files represented
as a sequence of records of bounded size might choose to encode the
file position as, for example,
<<record-number>>*<<max-record-size>>+<<character-within-record>>.
This is a valid encoding because it increases monotonically as
each character is read or written, though not necessarily by 1 at
each step.  An integer might then be considered "inappropriate"
as position-spec to file-position if, when decoded into
record number and character number, it turned out that the
supplied record was too short for the specified character number.
Allegro CL Implementation Details:
 None. |