22.1.1 Overview of The Lisp Printer

Common Lisp provides a representation of most objects in the form of printed text called the printed representation. Functions such as print take an object and send the characters of its printed representation to a stream. The collection of routines that does this is known as the (Common Lisp) printer.

Reading a printed representation typically produces an object that is equal to the originally printed object.

22.1.1.1 Multiple Possible Textual Representations