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5.3.3 Printed Representation

As well as translating textual descriptions to Lisp objects, the process may be reversed, converting a value back to a textual description. The resulting text is known as the printed representation of the object, and will usually be very similar to the read syntax of the object (see Read Syntax).

Objects which do not have a read syntax do have a printed representation, it will normally be of the form,

#<relevant-text>

where the relevant-text is object-dependent and usually describes the object and its contents. The reader will signal an error if it encounters a description of an object in the format ‘#<…>’.