ANSI Common Lisp   22 Printer   22.1 The Lisp Printer

22.1.2 Printer Dispatching

The Lisp printer makes its determination of how to print an object as follows:

If the value of *print-pretty* is true, printing is controlled by the current pprint dispatch table; see Section 22.2.1.4 Pretty Print Dispatch Tables.

Otherwise (if the value of *print-pretty* is false), the object's print-object method is used; see Section 22.1.3 Default Print-Object Methods.