On parsing large binary file it's very inconvenient to load it completely in the memory for access complex structures.
For example:
In "Microsoft Compound File" internal FAT can be at any part of the file and sectors can be in any order like in FAT16(32) file system.
And if I want to load only the structure tree without data stream Then I want to get data from stream I must open and load it again.
This extension can be realized in any modern operating system and seems to be equivalent to (setf stream-element-type) - that is not realized in SBCL for example :-).
Yes the code using this will be unportable but it's Very Very convenient and intuitive.
how is this supposed to be different from file-position with a second argument?
http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_file_p.htm
(defsetf file-position file-position) is all you need.
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