[Openmcl-devel] A LISP Question

[Jaime Magiera]

Howdy, I had originally subscribed to this list because I thought it 
was for developing *with* OpenMCL, as opposed to developing OpenMCL. 
However, I've remained subscribed to better understand OpenMCL and LISP 
in general. You folks are all very dedicated to this project. Very 
cool.

I've run into a "lack of knowledge" problem and was wondering if folks 
could point me in the right direction. I'm developing a LISP network 
server to interactive with a Virtual Reality glove. The data coming 
from the glove is in the form of Open Sound Protocol packets. So far, 
the server was written without problem. However, I don't now anything 
about dealing with raw data in terms of bites, let alone doing it in 
LISP.

The data format... (from 
http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/OSC-spec.html)

This table shows the parts of a two-or-more-element OSC Bundle and the 
size (in 8-bit bytes) of each part.
Parts of an OSC Bundle

Data							Size					Purpose

OSC-string "#bundle"			8 bytes				How to know that this data is a bundle

OSC-timetag					8 bytes				Time tag that applies to the entire bundle

Size of first bundle element    		 int32 = 4 bytes			First bundle 
element
First bundle element's contents	As many bytes as given by "size of 
first bundle element"

Size of second bundle element	int32 = 4 bytes			Second bundle element
Second bundle element's contents	As many bytes as given by "size of 
second bundle element"

etc.

The specific data coming in looks like this...

#bundleL/p5glove_data,iiiiiiiiiii?+("!e????|

Could someone point me in the right direction for breaking down this 
data? Or to better understanding bit-level reading/manipulation in 
LISP? This project is going to be used in a music performance November 
23. I just need to get at this data for some really cool algorithmic 
music composition.

thanks for any help,

Jaime