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### 2.1 Character Syntax

The Lisp reader takes characters from a stream, interprets them as a printed representation of an object, constructs that object, and returns it.

The syntax described by this chapter is called the standard syntax . Operations are provided by Common Lisp so that various aspects of the syntax information represented by a readtable can be modified under program control; see Reader. Except as explicitly stated otherwise, the syntax used throughout this document is standard syntax.