Ken Dickey,
I believe that '~&" should ensure that output begins on a new line. That is,
output a newline character if (and only if) the output stream is *not* already
at the start of a line. I have compared SRFI-48 (version posted here June 26) with
Common Lisp, Guile, Gauche and STklos and find that SRFI-48 behaves differently
from Common Lisp and the Guile module (ice-9 format) and STKlos default.
Here is my test code:
=============================================================================
;;;
;;; Copyright (c) 2005 Stephen Lewis
;;;
;;; test behaviour of (format ...) re linefeeds
;;;
; clisp -q program.lsp
;(format t "Clisp/default~%")
(define t #t)	; for Scheme
; guile -s program.lsp
;(use-modules (ice-9 format)) (format #t "Guile/ice-9~%")
;(load "./srfi-48.scm") (format #t "Guile/srfi-48~%")
; gosh program.lsp
;(load "./srfi-48.scm") (format #t "Gauche/srfi-48~%")
; stklos -f program.lsp
;(format t "STklos/default~%")
;
(format t "Testing linefeeds...~%")
(format t "---~%")
(format t "abc~%~&def~&ghi~%")
(format t "---~%")
(format t "abc~%")
(format t "~&def~&ghi~%")
(format t "---~%")
=============================================================================
and here are my results:
=============================================================================
Clisp/default
Testing linefeeds...
---
abc
def
ghi
---
abc
def
ghi
---
Guile/ice-9
Testing linefeeds...
---
abc
def
ghi
---
abc
def
ghi
---
Guile/srfi-48
Testing linefeeds...
---
abc
def
ghi
---
abc

def
ghi
---
Gauche/srfi-48
Testing linefeeds...
---
abc
def
ghi
---
abc

def
ghi
---
STklos/default
Testing linefeeds...
---
abc
def
ghi
---
abc
def
ghi
---
=============================================================================
I believe that the blank line between "abc" and "def" (which only occurs when
I use srfi-48 under either Guile or Gauche) is spurious,
Stephen Lewis