Syntax:

read-sequence sequence stream &key start end => position

sequence---a sequence.

stream---an input stream.

start, end---bounding index designators of sequence. The defaults for start and end are 0 and nil, respectively.

position---an integer greater than or equal to zero, and less than or equal to the length of the sequence.

Description:

Destructively modifies sequence by replacing the elements of sequence bounded by start and end with elements read from stream.

Sequence is destructively modified by copying successive elements into it from stream. If the end of file for stream is reached before copying all elements of the subsequence, then the extra elements near the end of sequence are not updated.

Position is the index of the first element of sequence that was not updated, which might be less than end because the end of file was reached.

Examples:

 (defvar *data* (make-array 15 :initial-element nil))
 (values (read-sequence *data* (make-string-input-stream "test string")) *data*)
 =>  11, #(#\t #\e #\s #\t #\Space #\s #\t #\r #\i #\n #\g NIL NIL NIL NIL)

Side Effects:

Modifies stream and sequence.

Affected By: None.

Exceptional Situations:

Should be prepared to signal an error of type type-error if sequence is not a proper sequence. Should signal an error of type type-error if start is not a non-negative integer. Should signal an error of type type-error if end is not a non-negative integer or nil.

Might signal an error of type type-error if an element read from the stream is not a member of the element type of the sequence.

See Also:

Section 3.2.1 (Compiler Terminology), write-sequence, read-line

Notes:

read-sequence is identical in effect to iterating over the indicated subsequence and reading one element at a time from stream and storing it into sequence, but may be more efficient than the equivalent loop. An efficient implementation is more likely to exist for the case where the sequence is a vector with the same element type as the stream.