28  The Format Function

1. format - do formated output

(format stream fmt arg...) - do formated output

stream - the output stream
fmt - the format string
arg - the format arguments
returns - output string if stream is NIL, NIL otherwise

The format string can contain characters that should be copied directly to the output and formatting directives. The formatting directives are:

~A	-	print next argument using princ
~S	-	print next argument using prin1
~%	-	start a new line
~~	-	print a tilde character
~<newline>	-	ignore this one newline and white space on the next line up to the first non-white-space character or newline. This allows strings to continue across multiple lines.