I've discovered that my approach to quoting filenames with single quotes isn't a good idea, since I've discovered loads of filenames that have single quotes in their names. :-) So I want to use (format " %s " file-name) and surround the %s with something other than single quotes... Is it possible to do something that's both acceptable to newLISP and the Unix shell?
You could try double quotes in UNIX for delimiting file names. To allow " in newLISP inside a string you have several ways to do it:
(format ""%s"" file-name)
(format {"%s"} file-name)
(format [text]"%s"[/text] file-name)
This way UNIX will not trip over single quotes part of the filename. I think this would also work on Win32.
Lutz
ps: both {,} and [text],[/text] suppress escape character processing inside the string.
Yes, these changes work OK, as far as I can see. Thanks!