Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
The following functions access a single character element of a string.
[Function]
char string index
schar simple-string index
The given index must be a non-negative integer less than the length of string, which must be a string. The character at position index of the string is returned as a character object. (This character will necessarily satisfy the predicate string-char-p.)
X3J13 voted in March 1989 (CHARACTER-PROPOSAL)
to eliminate string-char-p.
As with all sequences in Common Lisp, indexing is zero-origin. For example:
(char "Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs" 0) => #\F (char "Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs" 1) => #\l
See aref and elt. In effect,
(char s j) == (aref (the string s) j)
setf may be used with char to destructively replace a character within a string.
For char, the string may be any string; for schar, it must be a simple string. In some implementations of Common Lisp, the function schar may be faster than char when it is applicable.