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7.2.2 Foreign Types and Lisp Types

The foreign types form a subsystem of the SBCL type system. An alien type specifier provides a way to use any foreign type as a Lisp type specifier. For example,

     (typep foo '(alien (* int)))

can be used to determine whether foo is a pointer to a foreign int. alien type specifiers can be used in the same ways as ordinary Lisp type specifiers (like string.) Alien type declarations are subject to the same precise type checking as any other declaration. See Precise Type Checking.

Note that the type identifiers used in the foreign type system overlap with native Lisp type specifiers in some cases. For example, the type specifier (alien single-float) is identical to single-float, since foreign floats are automatically converted to Lisp floats. When type-of is called on an alien value that is not automatically converted to a Lisp value, then it will return an alien type specifier.