From: Alan Watson
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 14:13:51 -0500
Subject: [Formal] Have put-datum append atmosphere

Submitter: Alan Watson
Issue type: Enhancement
Priority: Minor
Component: Library Chapter 8
Version: 5.93
Summary: Have put-datum append atmosphere

An important use of put-datum (or write) is to store data in a form that 
can subsequently by recovered by get-datum (or read).

Currently, after certain data, one has to call something like (newline) 
after put-datum in order to be sure of correctly separating the data.

I would suggest that put-datum behave in such a way that the data 
written by two consecutive calls to put-datum can always be read by two 
consecutive calls to get-datum. This will require atmosphere to be 
appended in some cases.


RESPONSE:

A call to `put-datum' can be followed, without harm, by a call to
`newline' or something else to emit whitespace.  On the other hand,
with the suggested change, one would have no reasonable way to
suppress unwanted trailing atmosphere, say if one were using `put-datum'
to implement formatted output.