Generic Function | Package: excl | ToC | DocOverview | CGDoc | RelNotes | FAQ | Index | PermutedIndex
| Allegro CL version 9.0 Unrevised from 8.2 to 9.0. 8.2 version

## file-character-position

Arguments: simple-stream

This generic function tries to determine the character position of its `simple-stream` argument, similar to stream-line-column which tries to determine the character number from the beginning of a line. The value returned is a non-negative integer or `nil`.

The first character in a file has character position 0 (following Lisp practice of numbering things starting at 0). Some editors (Emacs being an example) consider the character position of the first character to be 1. So Emacs command "M-x goto-char 2 1 RET" goes to character position 20. Emacs users and users of other editors which consider the first character to have position 1 should take this difference into account.

`nil` means that the value cannot be determined. This can happen, for example, if bytes rather than characters have been read from simple-stream or the file-position has been set. Unlike stream-line-column, which can re-synchronize itself after reading a newline, file-character-position cannot; it can only re-synchronize itself when the file-position starts at zero and only characters are read.

Copyright (c) 1998-2019, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
This page was not revised from the 8.2 page.
Created 2012.5.30.

|  | ToC | DocOverview | CGDoc | RelNotes | FAQ | Index | PermutedIndex
| Allegro CL version 9.0 Unrevised from 8.2 to 9.0. 8.2 version