This package is built to turn arrays, characters, strings, symbols, numbers, and lists into each other.
I built this package because I found I frequently try to convert from one type to another and I couldnt easily find a package that was able to do this.
GPLv3 license. See LICENSE file for more information.
Sometimes it returns chars and sometimes it returns numbers. (convert ‘123 ‘list) => (1 2 3) but (convert ‘a123 ‘list) => (#\a #\1 #\2 #\3).
I could add an optional parameter to handle this so user can say whether it should be char or num, but it can also be handled by turning the number into a string, (convert “123” ‘list) => (#\1 #\2 #\3).
The benefit of adding an optional parameter will be so that (convert “123” ‘list ‘number) => (1 2 3) instead of a list of characters.
There is an easy workaround though, as we can just (mapcar #’numberify numbers-as-char-list. Though this way of handling it seems awkward.
All the elements must be single digits (ex. chars, numbers, or strings). If the results arent then current implementation cannot handle it.
This can be fixed by flattening the list/array.
When converting a list/array of symbols to chars/string the symbols will be capitalized.
I would expect the case to be passed on down the line, but because of the way common-lisp works it will always capitalize symbols.
Figure out a way to make this less weird or more explicit.
Number (ex 123) conversion to list/array gives (1 2 3) instead of (123). This is because it is more useful to be able to split it into its elements since we can just do (list 123) to get the other result.
Add this into the documentation to reduce confusion.
Maybe the function should be renamed to make it more obvious or
integrate it into the convert function to make it more explicit.
Sometimes when handing a function an array, it will return an array and othertimes it will give a list.
Fix this so that it is more consistent. Always return a list. It is easy to convert a list to an array – just do (vec the-list) – so it is better to be consistent.
Some conversions are not obvious. It might make more sense to
change the convert function to take another (possible optional)
parameter which makes it more obvious what is going to happen.
Add methods for each type so nil is converted to correct value, ex. (stringify nil) => “”
Currently numberify cannot handle input besides numbers (ex.
numbers as characters).
Possibly add an option to ignore any inputs that are not numbers so that doing (numberify “a12b”) => 12.
Numberify uses parse-integer to turn a string of numbers into a
number quickly. I put it in a let block so it wouldnt print the
number of digits. I need to figure out how to disable the printing
later.
Using parse-integer makes numberify very easy to use. I can
add an optional argument to help change the radix with very little
work.