Tilde A-> Aesthetic (ANSI and GNU Common Lisp Document)

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#### 22.3.4.1 Tilde A: Aesthetic

An arg, any object, is printed without escape characters (as by princ). If arg is a string, its characters will be output verbatim. If arg is nil it will be printed as nil; the colon modifier (`~:A`) will cause an arg of nil to be printed as `()`, but if arg is a composite structure, such as a list or vector, any contained occurrences of nil will still be printed as nil.

`~mincolA` inserts spaces on the right, if necessary, to make the width at least mincol columns. The `@` modifier causes the spaces to be inserted on the left rather than the right.

`~mincol,colinc,minpad,padcharA` is the full form of `~A`, which allows control of the padding. The string is padded on the right (or on the left if the `@` modifier is used) with at least minpad copies of padchar; padding characters are then inserted colinc characters at a time until the total width is at least mincol. The defaults are `0` for mincol and minpad, `1` for colinc, and the space character for padchar.

`~A` binds *print-escape* to false,

and *print-readably* to false.