[Openmcl-devel] rules for string to NSstring conversions

[R. Matthew Emerson]

On Dec 15, 2008, at 10:47 AM, Alexander Repenning wrote:

> Anyway, here is just something that appears to be inconsistent. Two  
> implementations of MCL-like standard alert dialog. The first one can  
> handle lisp string to NSstring coercion just fine (i.e., "bla" turn  
> into a constant NSstring and nil turns into a Objective-c null  
> pointer) whereas the second implementation based on the  
> "alertWithMessageText:defaultButton:alternateButton:otherButton:informativeTextWithFormat 
> " function which also takes NSstring parameters, cannot handle lisp  
> strings or nil. What is the rule for automatic conversion to work?  
> The only obvious difference I can see is that  
> alertWithMessageText:defaultButton:alternateButton:otherButton:informativeTextWithFormat 
>  is a class method but why would that be relevant?

This isn't answering your question, but I want to mention that the  
trunk version of CCL doesn't support automatic coercion of lisp  
strings to NSStrings.

Please see http://trac.clozure.com/openmcl/ticket/133

If you've got a lisp string in some-string, you can use (#/autorelease  
(%make-nsstring some-string)) when providing NSString parameters.

I think that we may want to add a WITH-NSSTRINGS (or WITH-CFSTRINGS  
maybe?) macro which would be analogous to WITH-CSTRS.