[swift-evolution] multi-line string literals.

[Michael Peternell]

Comments inline.

> Am 26.04.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Ted F.A. van Gaalen <tedvgiosdev at gmail.com>:
> 
> Hi Michael
> 
> What happens if a delimiter in this case: “”” 
> occurs embedded in the data?   like  so (two times here):

that's a problem you always have. And I think pasting a few lines of text is a (much) more common use case than wanting to have a string literal that contains """ in it. I have never needed a string literal that contained """, and as long as you don't create a parser for a language that wants to parse such literals, the use cases are very rare IMO. Furthermore, if the string interpolation and escape sequences are enabled, I can answer this directly: you write """some text
some text. Here you have 3 double quotes: ""\" and here again \"""
"""; you can just put a backslash before one of the offending double quotes.

I think starting each line with \\ is really ugly, and I wouldn't consider this a true "multi-line string literal". Because instead of writing

\\bla bla
\\bla bla

I'd rather write

"bla bla\n"
"bla bla"

> 
> “””
> dfksposdkj dslkd s hfdslk   dskdslk  lskd sk aaasd
> lfsdlks dslksd sdlk sdlksd  “””  fskfsdalkfsd  “”” fdjf dkjfds  
> “”"
> 
> Having a particular token at the start of a line (or after  leading space(s) ) to define a data line 
> allows us to use *all* available characters behind it.  
> 
> Actually after further thinking, I assume that 1 token is not enough, perhaps there should be two tokens e.g.
> 
>   \\ ……………...   to process  escaped chars, like \… and \(item),  
>                 the same way as with normal Swift string literals
> 
>   \@………….   to take all characters as is without conversion?    
> 
> 
> Examples:
> 1.
> let someText = 
> \\There are \t \t  \(nrofboxes) boxes avai
> \\lable.
> converts to:
> "There are             12 boxes available."

really? so I have to write \n if I want to have a newline?

> 
> 2.
> 
> let someText = 
> \@There are \t \t  \(nrofboxes) boxes avai
> \@able.
> String taken as is, nothing is converted:
> "There are \t \t  \(nrofboxes) boxes available."
> 
> Of course one could choose other tokens than \\ and \@
> they just looked convenient to me...
> 
> TedvG
> 
> 
>> On 26.04.2016, at 07:53, Michael Peternell <michael.peternell at gmx.at> wrote:
>> 
>> """Just in my opinion:
>> having to start each line with a particular token kinda defeats the purpose of multiline string literals.
> Why? 

because IMHO the purpose of multiline string literals *is* that you can copy&paste multiple lines of text directly into the editor? If I call \\literals a 'multi-line literal', I can call "normal strings" multiline too, can't I?

What makes
    \\this
    \\string
a 'multiline string literal'
    "and this "
    "string"
not? (What is the definition of a "multiline string literal"?)

-Michael