Representation-Level Notes

At the observable language level, the following can be said:

• strings preserve character order,
• strings are delimited by double quotes in source representation,
• strings participate in search, comparison, concatenation, and I/O functions,
• the meaning of a "character" is version-sensitive in Unicode-era Autodesk behavior.

At the implementation level, the following remain under-specified in the current source set:

• whether AutoCAD stores strings internally as Unicode code points, UTF-16 code units, or another representation,
• whether string indexing counts code units, Unicode scalar values, grapheme-like user-visible characters, or implementation-defined units in every function,
• whether normalization is performed or preserved,
• the exact interaction between source-file encoding, runtime string representation, and printer behavior in all releases.

Therefore, clautolisp should distinguish:

• external source encoding,
• external file I/O encoding,
• internal string representation,
• observable character/string API semantics.

Only the observable semantics should be treated as normative until stronger evidence is available.