Make clos objects printable in lisp

Question

If you want to make CLOS objects in common lisp printable (print readably), how do you go about doing this without using anything but print and read.

Answer 1

There are two parts to doing this, at least in my solution, however you will need this function (thanks to the guys at cl-prevalence for this (warn LLGPL)

(defun get-slots (object)
  ;; thanks to cl-prevalence
  #+openmcl
  (mapcar #'ccl:slot-definition-name
      (#-openmcl-native-threads ccl:class-instance-slots
       #+openmcl-native-threads ccl:class-slots
       (class-of object)))
  #+cmu
  (mapcar #'pcl:slot-definition-name (pcl:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #+sbcl
  (mapcar #'sb-pcl:slot-definition-name (sb-pcl:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #+lispworks
  (mapcar #'hcl:slot-definition-name (hcl:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #+allegro
  (mapcar #'mop:slot-definition-name (mop:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #+sbcl
  (mapcar #'sb-mop:slot-definition-name (sb-mop:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #+clisp
  (mapcar #'clos:slot-definition-name (clos:class-slots (class-of object)))
  #-(or openmcl cmu lispworks allegro sbcl clisp)
  (error "not yet implemented"))

Then, for reading you will need to run this piece of code, which sets up 1/2 of the syntax which is { type-of-object ((slot-name . slot-value) (slot-name . slot-value) ...)

(set-macro-character 
     #\{
     #'(lambda (str char)
     (declare (ignore char))
     (let ((list (read-delimited-list #\} str t)))
       (let ((type (first list))
         (list (second list)))
         (let ((class (allocate-instance (find-class type))))
           (loop for i in list do
            (setf (slot-value class (car i)) (cdr i)))
           class)))))

For printing, use

(defmethod print-object ((object standard-object) stream)
  (format stream "{ ~s ~s}" (type-of object)
      (loop for i in (get-slots object)
    collect (cons i (slot-value object i)))))

A *print-readably* is highly recommended when using all these methods. Also, note that circular relationships are untested