... point on a different point

[Jon White <JLW@SU-AI.ARPA>]

Re your message of 7-May-85 16:43 EDT

in your defense of
;;; -*- Package:...
;;; my data file
over
;;; my data file
(in-package ...)
you seem to be arguing as though the former happens at a level below READ,
and is thus unambiguous, whereas th latter is ambiguous since the form
(in-package ...)
could be data for the application program.

I don't see any such permission for READ mentioned in th CL manual.  In fact,
I have on numerous ocasions wanted to open a file and read character-by-character
to get a "close" look at the first few lines; and then call READ.

Isn't the right decomposition of functionality here to have a system-supplied
function called, say, READ-AND-DO-FILE-ATTRIBUTES; then LOAD would call it
on source files, and lusers who have random data files would make the
determination of attribute-information or data programmatically.  I.e., 
the mere act of opening a file, or reading from it, would not, by itself,
do the READ-AND-DO-FILE-ATTRIBUTES; but th luser can call it, either at 
top-level, or from some lower-level program.

-- JonL --