HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: johnson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson)
Subject: Re: Is Smalltalk the language for us?
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:21:24 GMT

nadja@jetsun.weitek.COM (Nadja Adolf) writes:

>If for some reason the smalltalk object hasn't
>reached the final subclass, there can be some very dangerous behavior.
>This is a major problem when writing things that are running asynchronously
>on more than one host. C++ provides ways in which each machine can verify
>object status quickly and with few problems.

How?  Certainly none of the C++ compilers that I have seen can do this.
Which C++ are using?  What do you mean by "object status"?  

"Object hasn't reached the final subclass" is very un-Smalltalklike.  The
object is always in its final class.  I think that you mean that it might
not have executed the init method of its top-most superclass, but this is
no more (or less) dangerous than any other bug.  Not initializing an object
properly is a bug, and it can happen because you write the constructor wrong
or because you forget to call the constructor in the superclass.  It is nice
that C++ ensures that you always call constructors in superclasses, but I
can't see how this is a major advantage.

>All instances isn't the only way. Having a program that runs simultaneously
>across platforms does it just as well. Since there is no behavior at
>destruction, it requires creating additional smalltalk subclasses to notify
>the other platforms.

The only multiprocessor Smalltalk systems I know about are distributed
systems in which a distributed object is represented by proxies in the
images on other machines.  Is this what you are talking about, or something
else?  Are you just giving hypothetical problems, or are these real problems
in systems you have seen?  This doesn't make any sense to me, and I have
been studying (though only rarely programming) distributed systems for 15
years.  You certainly have to notify other platforms if an object that they
have pointers to is going to be destroyed.  (By the way, we usually put a
"destroy" method on objects that we want to destroy, and it will remove
itself from objects that point to it.  This is certainly no more dangerous
than just deleting an object and hoping that nobody points to it.

Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: steinman@is.morgan.com (Jan Steinman)
Subject: Re: update questions
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Company
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 19:12:10 GMT

In article <9209251948.AA09052@data.src.honeywell.com> bergstro@src.honeywell.com (Pete Bergstrom) writes:
   mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown) wrote:
   > Digitalk has reduced the subscription price of Scoop $36 > $18, I believe.
   >Also, Scoop is now bigger.  I'm not sure how long you get it free.

   My registration card said that I will get 3 months of Scoop free when
   I send it in.  $18 sounds really reasonable, assuming it's monthly.

On the other hand, The PPS newsletter is free, at least to ParcPlace
Partners. I assume it is free to customers, also.

I think Digitalk is really shooting themselves in the foot with this
one. Here is mechanism that keeps their latest marketing material in
the hands of those most likely to buy their new products, and they
charge for the privilage? No thanks!

This might be different if Scoop were anything but marketing
information, but I do not recall seeing anything except staff-written
material in it, mostly in the form of announcements, although there
are some instructive articles.

My consulting practice involves both ST/V and ST-80, but if someone
asks for a recommendation between the two, I am inclined to be more
up-to-date with the vendor who isn't stingy with marketing
information. This is not to say that I won't recommend ST/V simply because
they charge for their marketing materials, but I refuse to pay for
them, and am therefore less likely to know about the new and wonderful
things they provide.

I wrote Barbara Noparstak, asking that at least consultants and VARs
be able to get the newsletter gratis, but I never received an answer.
Perhaps if everyone reading this writes Barbara a polite "don't charge
us for Scoop" letter, the message might come across?
--
: : Jan Steinman	   steinman@is.morgan.com		 Bytesmiths : :
: : 2002 Parkside Court				   West Linn, OR 97068-2767 : :
: : 503/657-7703					       212/956-8722 : :
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: steinman@is.morgan.com (Jan Steinman)
Subject: Re: comparing object-oriented platforms
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Company
	<1992Oct3.140004.26865@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 05:23:08 GMT

This whole notion of tearing down and rebuilding reminds me of a Ward
Cunningham anecdote.

We were working together in the group at Tek that produced their
commercial Smalltalk product. For this privilage, we got to use each
other's alpha code.

One frustrating day, after a series of alpha-VM crashes that wiped out
my image, I wandered over to Ward and started complaining (a favorite
pass-time) about the situation.

Ward responded to the effect that he was thankful that he lost all his
work from time to time, because it gave him a good excuse to re-write
it! (As they say, "I was Enlightened.")
--
: : Jan Steinman	     bytesmiths@aol.com			 Bytesmiths : :
: : 2002 Parkside Court				   West Linn, OR 97068-2767 : :
: : 503/657-7703					       212/956-8722 : :
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: ppc1@cec1.wustl.edu (Peter Pui Tak Chiu)
Subject: BEAUTIFER
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis MO
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 22:10:59 GMT

dear friends,

i am writing LISP programs using a normal editor and i would like to
beautify my LISP code after i am done with it... is there any beautifer
either on MSDOS or UNIX out there?????

please let me know...

peter

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: hacker@access.digex.com (Dark Hacker)
Subject: Desperatly Seeking Xlisp!
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 00:24:02 GMT

Can anyone provide the location of XLisp for the NeXT or Macintosh?
I did find one Xlisp for the Macintosh on orst.edu however this
package was in "fit" format and was not unpackable by Stuffit.

Where can I find the latest Mac XLisp, anybody know?

- Hacker
-- 
---
Dark Hacker @ Black Silicon, Fortress Of Computation
8340 Greensboro Drive #223  Phone: (703) 356-6514
McLean VA                   Uucp: mimsy!kzin!speaker
From: danny@farallon.com (Danny Brewer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: #'reduce
Date: 6 Oct 92 16:25:49 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lang.lisp
Organization: Farallon Computing, Inc.

In article <OLI.92Oct6124657@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de>,
oli@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Oliver Christ) wrote:
> this might be an annoying question, but why does
> 
>  (reduce #'max '("This" "is" "a" "test" ".") :key #'length)
> 
> result in a 'unknown keyword: :key' error both with Allegro CL 4.1 and
> Lucid 4.0 on a Sparc? 

Reduce doesn't accept :KEY according to CLtL2.  In fact, if you
look at REDUCE more closely, you'll see that :KEY wouldn't make sense.

Instead of REDUCE, try the following:

(APPLY #'MAX (MAPCAR #'LENGTH '("This" "is" "a" "test" ".")))

Even more efficient would be:

(LET ((max 0))
  (DOLIST (elt '("This" "is" "a" "test" "."))
    (SETF max (MAX max (LENGTH elt))))
  max)


Danny Brewer
danny@farallon.com
From: yin@CS.ColoState.EDU (hwei yin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: SATISFIES in CL
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:29:43 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Colorado State University, Computer Science Department

Hello out there...

Forgive me if this is a FAQ, but is there a "satisfies" function in Common 
Lisp?  Someone mentioned it, but I was unable to find any reference in Common
LISPCraft.  Please email responses to yin@cs.colostate.edu.  You can simply
refer me to a good book if the explanation is too complex


Thank you, thank you, thank you, and bless you,
Hwei Yin (yin@cs.colostate.edu)
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: string search and assignment
Date: 30 Sep 1992 02:58:20 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.think.com

In article <6499@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> rlpst@cislabs.pitt.edu (Robert L Pack) writes:
>What i want to do is start at the beginning of the file( which I can do)
>and search for the word "entity". Once I find this, I want to assign the
>next word to a variable. 
>
>My proplem is that I can't figure out what stream to look at as it moves
>from word to word and, thus, I can't do a correct comparison.

I don't see the need to read the stream word by word.  If you use READ-LINE
to read each line of the file into a string, you can then do something
like:

(defun word-after-entity (string)
  "If STRING contains "entity <word>" returns <word>, otherwise returns NIL."
  (let ((position (search "entity " string :test #'char-equal)))
    (when position
      (word-at-position string (+ position (length "entity "))))))
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: rfb@CS.CMU.EDU (Rick Busdiecker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: How to find the first n items in a list?
Date: 29 Sep 92 02:01:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: H.RFB.92Sep28210127
	<19920928203939.6.KMP@PLANTAIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Originator: rfb@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <19920928203939.6.KMP@PLANTAIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> KMP@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Kent M Pitman) writes:

       Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 13:58 EDT
       From: Mark Chang <mchang@bcrka440.bnr.ca>

       For example, I have a long list, '(0 1 2 ..... 9999)
       and I want the first 1000 items as a list, '(0 1 ... 1000).

   . . .

   It also depends on what assumptions you are making about how the list is
   terminated.  e.g., in both of the following, I'm assuming the list might 
   be dotted.

If you can assume that N is less than or equal to the length of
the list, you could use:

(defun firstn (list n)
  (subseq list 0 n))

and rely on the implementation to implement SUBSEQ efficiently.  For
some implementations, such as Allegro (Extended Common Lisp 2.0.10),
the restriction on N is not necessary.

   You could write a custom version of LENGTH that timed out after
   value N . . .

This would also apply here, for example:

(defun firstn (list n)
  (if (list-length-less-than list n)
      (subseq list 0 n)
      list))

-- 
Rick Busdiecker <rfb+@cs.cmu.edu>
``Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers''
				- Unknown
Xref: sparky comp.lang.lisp:2588 comp.lang.lisp.x:246
From: kuang@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Da Kuang)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.x
Subject: How to call C code subroutine from Lisp ?
Date: 6 Oct 92 00:58:49 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lang.lisp
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

Hi, Lisp experts:
     I am writting a program using Autolisp.But some subroutine I will write
in C. Does any one know how to call C code in Lisp?
      Thank you in advance for your help.
From: secrist@kxovax.enet.dec.com (Strong datatypes for weak minds.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Interpreters
Date: 1 Oct 92 09:15:25 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


Check out comp.lang.scheme.

rcs
From: williams@aifh.ed.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,uk.lisp
Subject: which lisp?
Date: 6 Oct 92 13:09:08 GMT
Reply-To: williams@aifh.ed.ac.uk ()
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland

This is probably a FAQ (is there a FAQ for this group?) but here goes
anyway...

I have to find a lisp compiler/interpreter to use in a (fairly large)
commercial software project, and I basically don't know where to start
looking.  The only lisp that I've used in anger is AKCL and I don't even
know where that came from.  The platform is a Sun Microsystems
Sparcstation and there are no a priori restrictions (on things like
compatibility).

Can anyone give me a couple of leads (like who markets Lisp systems, ftp
addresses, recommendations, etc) or shout "stupid" and say that there's
a FAQ list somewhere.

thanks

Bill Smart
williams@uk.ac.ed.aifh
From: oli@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Oliver Christ)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: #'reduce
Date: 6 Oct 92 11:38:30 GMT
Reply-To: oli@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
Organization: IMS, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Hi,

this might be an annoying question, but why does

 (reduce #'max '("This" "is" "a" "test" ".") :key #'length)

result in a 'unknown keyword: :key' error both with Allegro CL 4.1 and
Lucid 4.0 on a Sparc? 

  (find 4 '("This" "is" "a" "test" ".") :key #'length)

(although not very useful) works fine.

Any help? In X3J13's CL draft #'reduce accepts :key arguments.

Thanks,

Oli
--
Oli
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Christ
Institute for Natural Language Processing, University of Stuttgart, Germany
oli@ims.uni-stuttgart.de/christ@is.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dat91uni@ludat.lth.se (Urban Nilsson)
Subject: CMU Common Lisp 16e, how to format the output ?
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Lund University, Sweden
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 10:54:19 GMT


Hi !

I have a problem !, at our school we use CMU Common Lisp 16e and I dont know how
to format the output to the screen *sigh*

If there are anyone out there that knows, please tell me how to do !

Thanks in advance

/ Urban
---
Lev Gott ...    , Have a nice life ...

Urban Nilsson  (UNI)                  | Snailmail: Magistergatan 2
Internet:      dat91uni@ludat.lth.se  |            252 27 Helsingborg
Phone, voice:  +46 42 182154          |            Sweden
                                      |
IgorMud:       Cedric                 |
---
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: problem: eval-hook function
Date: 29 Sep 1992 02:22:18 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.think.com
Keywords: eval-hook, lucid

In article <1992Sep25.113945.14257@rhrk.uni-kl.de> stein@arctecserv-2.dfki.uni-kl.de (Werner Stein) writes:
>  after compiling the program the eval-hook-function is never called
>  (except for the (not compiled) top-level function call)

The eval-hook function is only called when the interpreter is invoked to
execute a form.  In general, compiled code doesn't go through the
interpreter, since the compiler usually translates the forms into code that
executes it directly.  So you'll only invoke the eval-hook function when
you explicitly call EVAL, use the read-eval-print loop, or execute an
interpreted function by applying a lambda expression or an uncompiled
function.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU (Sandra Loosemore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: How to find the first n items in a list?
Date: 28 Sep 92 20:15:41 GMT
Organization: staff hacker @ Yale Haskell project

mchang@bcrka440.bnr.ca (Mark Chang) writes:

    Can any experts suggest the most efficient way to
    find the first n items in a long list?

Ummm, use SUBSEQ?  I'd expect that to be implemented in a way that's
reasonably efficient.

-Sandra
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: Tim Larkin <tsl1@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: macros with &rest argument
X-Xxdate: Mon, 28 Sep 92 15: 18:08 GMT
Nntp-Posting-User: tsl1@cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell University
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d7
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 14:11:31 GMT

In article <WEIGERT.92Sep28185459@etlhit.etl.go.jp> Thomas Weigert,
weigert@etlhit.etl.go.jp writes:
>(defmacro fred (&rest)
>   `(do-something-with ,rest))

How about:

(defmacro fred (&rest)
  `(do-something-with ,@rest))

Tim Larkin
Federal Nutrition Laboratory
Tower Road
Ithaca, New York
tsl1@cornell.edu
607-255-7008
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: ashley@citr.uq.oz.au (Ashley Beitz)
Subject: Does Common Lisp have a formal standard?
Summary: Does Common Lisp have a formal standard?
Keywords: common lisp
Organization: Prentice Centre, University of Queensland
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 04:39:18 GMT

Does anyone know if Common Lisp has a formal standard?

If so, then what is the name of the standard and which standards body was
responsible for creating it.


Thanks

Ashley
--
Ashley Beitz		  | CiTR			|ashley@citr.uq.oz.au
                          | University of Queensland	|voice: +61 7 365 4482
			  | St Lucia, Queensland 4072	|fax:   +61 7 365 4399
			  | Australia			|
From: rlpst@cislabs.pitt.edu (Robert L Pack)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: string search and assignment
Date: 30 Sep 92 00:11:25 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh


Hi, 
I'm new to Lisp. I accidently volunteered to take over ownership of a Lisp
file and now I have to make some changes to it.

What i want to do is start at the beginning of the file( which I can do)
and search for the word "entity". Once I find this, I want to assign the
next word to a variable. 

My proplem is that I can't figure out what stream to look at as it moves
from word to word and, thus, I can't do a correct comparison.

Help. 

-- 
=================================================================
Bob Pack      			rlpst@gl.pitt.edu
University of Pittsburgh	
PittCAD Design Group	

EEFL: Pittsburgh LambdaChi's ( LCA -- Col Div )
"It's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm wearing milk bone underwear."
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: gandalf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Juergen Wagner)
Subject: Problem with defstruct : constructor &aux
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 14:14:18 GMT


The following doesn't seem to work under AKCL 1.609 on a SPARCstation:

(defstruct (a :named (:constructor make-a (&aux (slot 2))))
  slot)

It gives me an "Error: An illegal BOA constructor." According to CLtL, this
should be supported (there is even an example create-foo with &aux).

Am I overlooking something essential here?

--Juergen			gandalf@csli.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: schnatt@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Klemens Schnattinger)
Subject: CMU Lisp
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Universitaet Freiburg, Deutschland
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 14:52:40 GMT


Does anybody knows, where I can get the PD CMU-Common Lisp? I already
tried to find it with xarchie, but I have no luck.

Thanks in advance.



-- 
Klemens Schnattinger

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email: kle@supreme.coling.uni-freiburg.de
Smail: Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet, Deutsches Seminar I
       Linguistische Informatik / Computerlinguistik
       Klemens Schnattinger, Friedrichstr. 50, D-7800 Freiburg
Vmail: +49/761/203-4898
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Klemens Schnattinger

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email: kle@supreme.coling.uni-freiburg.de
From: mchang@bcrka440.bnr.ca (Mark Chang)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: How to find the first n items in a list?
Date: 28 Sep 92 17:58:45 GMT
Reply-To: mchang@bnr.ca
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada


 Can any experts suggest the most efficient way to
 find the first n items in a long list? I am mostly 
 concerned with the speed. 
 
 For example, I have a long list, '(0 1 2 ..... 9999)
 and I want the first 1000 items as a list, '(0 1 ... 1000).
 
 I can think of some ways, but none very efficient.
 What is the "standard" way to do this? 
 
 Thanks in advance for your help.

 ________________________________________________________
| Mark H. Chang     (mchang@bnr.ca)                      |
| (613) 763-7688    Bell-Northern Research               |
|                   Ottawa, Ontario                      |
|________________________________________________________|
From: tolba@alberic.loria.fr (Hany Tolba)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Lisp view for HP
Keywords: Lisp HP
Date: 2 Oct 92 16:44:00 GMT
Followup-To: comp.ai
Organization: Crin - Inria-Lorraine

Hello,
I wanted to know if there are any equivlanet PD implementation of lisp view
on HP 700 series work stations using Lucid Common Lisp.
We used to work with lispview on Sparc workstations and we changed
lately to HP 700 series. Regrding our Clisp packages we don't have
a problem since we are using lucid common lisp. However, we use Lisp view 
to build our interfaces and we don't want to rewrite them.
What we want to know if out there, there are lisp view that we can compile
on HP, or simply equivlant PD packages that will save us time and effort of
rewritting our sources.

Thank you in advance,
Hany
Ps: I'll be thankfull if you can forward your answers to my mail account.



-- 

************************************************************************
*  Hany TOLBA				  e-mail: hany.tolba@loria.fr  *
*       CRIN-CNRS & INRIA Lorraine                                     *
*       Campus Scientifique               Tel: (+ 33) 83912000         *
*       BP 239                                   ext. 3047             *
*       54506 Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy                                     *
*       FRANCE                            Fax: (+ 33) 83413079         *
************************************************************************
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Recognizing strings that are numbers: eg "123.33"
Date: 29 Sep 1992 16:10:58 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com
Keywords: string number

In article <1992Sep29.132811.921@cs.cornell.edu> raman@cs.cornell.edu (T. V. Raman) writes:
>I need to write a function number-string? which given a string returns
>t if the string is in fact a number inside quotes. Number here is a
>number as would be found in text eg 12 or 12.3 or 12,325 and not
>scientific notation etc.
>
>A naive way of writing this is
>(defun NUMBER-STRING? (string) 
>  "checks if string is a quoted number"
>  (and
>   (stringp string)
>   (numberp (read-from-string string)))
>  )

(defun number-string? (string)
  (and (stringp string)
       (numberp (ignore-errors (read-from-string string)))))

is better.  Note, however, that this will return true for numbers in
scientific notation, while it will return false for 12,325, because the
Lisp reader doesn't support commas inside numbers.

Also, it will return true for "123 foo", since READ-FROM-STRING will stop
at the delimiter.  To catch this you'll have to make use of the second
return value from READ-FROM-STRING, which is the index where it stopped
reading, and compare it to the length of the string.

Beyond this, I think you'll have to write your own little lexer that
recognizes all the number formats you wish to support.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: stevet@oakhill.sps.mot.com (Steve Turner)
Subject: Re: Desperatly Seeking Xlisp!
Organization: Motorola Inc., Austin, Texas
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 13:45:57 GMT

hacker@access.digex.com (Dark Hacker) writes:

>Can anyone provide the location of XLisp for the NeXT or Macintosh?
>I did find one Xlisp for the Macintosh on orst.edu however this
>package was in "fit" format and was not unpackable by Stuffit.

>Where can I find the latest Mac XLisp, anybody know?

I am also seeking xlisp for Mac.  I downloaded a copy from
sumex-aim.stanford.edu, but could not unpack it.
From: KMP@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Kent M Pitman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Recognizing strings that are numbers: eg "123.33"
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:40:42 GMT
Organization: LCS news/mail gateway
X-Unparseable-Date: Tue

I'd probably PARSE-INTEGER, iterating on commas and dots, rather than
READ since the required notation is specialized.

If you use READ-FROM-STRING, the IGNORE-ERRORS is right, but you should
also bind *READ-EVAL* to suppress any trojan horses that might creep in
due to use of #. in the string to be tested.