B. Pym wrote:

I have a file which consists of one word per line and I would like to read it into a single list.
Searching the web[1] I found something which I adapted to my
needs. Basically the code works but it is terribly inefficient. This
is not the fault of the CL Cookbook. Probably I am using a hammer as a screwdriver.

I'd be happy if you can give me some directions how I can tackle the problem in a better way.

I like loop for this:

(with-open-file (s "foo.txt" :direction :input)
(loop for line = (read-line s nil)
while line
collect line))

Gauche Scheme

(use gauche.generator)

(with-input-from-file "temp.txt"
(cut generator->list read-line))

Paul Graham, May 2001:

A hacker's language is terse and hackable. Common Lisp is not.

The good news is, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp.

newLISP

(let (h (open "output.dat" "read"))
(println (collect (read-line h)))
(close h))

("foo 0" "2 4 6" "8 9")

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