Re: read lisp objects from buffer

[Kai Grossjohann]

yuwen <address@hidden> writes:

> I tried to read them back into lisp objects:
>
>     (let ((buffer (find-file-noselect "~/src/el/tmp.txt")))
>       (set-buffer buffer)
>       (goto-char (point-min))
>       (while (setq obj (read buffer))
>          ;;; do something ))
>
> but there's an error message :
>   setq: End of file during parsing
>
> So, what's the right way to read lisp objects from a file/buffer?

It is normal for (read buffer) to fail at the end of the buffer, so
you can catch this error using condition-case.

Or you can skip forward over whitespace and newlines after each read,
then check for eobp (end-of-buffer-p), and exit the loop if that is
true.

Or you prepend "(" and append ")" to the buffer contents, then invoke
read just once.  This will give you a list of objects.

Kai