ANSI Common Lisp   22 Printer   22.3 Formatted Output   22.3.9 FORMAT Miscellaneous Pseudo-Operations

22.3.9.3 Tilde Newline: Ignored Newline

Tilde immediately followed by a newline ignores the newline and any following non-newline whitespace₁ characters. With a :, the newline is ignored, but any following whitespace₁ is left in place. With an @, the newline is left in place, but any following whitespace₁ is ignored. For example:

 (defun type-clash-error (fn nargs argnum right-type wrong-type)
   (format *error-output*
           "~&~S requires its ~:[~:R~;~*~]~ 
           argument to be of type ~S,~%but it was called ~
           with an argument of type ~S.~%"
           fn (eql nargs 1) argnum right-type wrong-type))
 (type-clash-error 'aref nil 2 'integer 'vector)  prints:
AREF requires its second argument to be of type INTEGER,
but it was called with an argument of type VECTOR.
NIL
 (type-clash-error 'car 1 1 'list 'short-float)  prints:
CAR requires its argument to be of type LIST,
but it was called with an argument of type SHORT-FLOAT.
NIL