[swift-evolution] [Accepted] SE-0168: Multi-Line String Literals

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Thorsten Seitz <tseitz42 at icloud.com> wrote:

>
> Am 21.04.2017 um 20:48 schrieb Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org>:
>
> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Erica Sadun <erica at ericasadun.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2017, at 12:40 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
>> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Robert Bennett via swift-evolution <
>> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Xiaodi, I think one thing you're neglecting is that users may never
>>> print out a multiline literal string at all. A string might never be
>>> printed or read by a human outside of the code it resides in. In this case
>>> it seems perfectly reasonable to ask that it be possible to format the
>>> string nicely in the code and disregard how it would actually be printed.
>>>
>>
>> Can you give an example of such a use case, where a string is never seen
>> by a human but one cannot insert literal newlines and would need elided
>> ones instead?
>>
>>
>> The most common reason is that the code is maintained by a (non-human)
>> developer, who wants to be able to see and update the code in a readable
>> form, but that represents a single line that will automatically wrapped by,
>> for example, a UITextView for (human) consumption.
>>
>
> A different scenario from what Robert's describing, but sure. This goes to
> my question to David Hart. Isn't this an argument for a feature to allow
> breaking a single-line string literal across multiple lines? What makes
> this a use case for some feature for _multiline_ string literals in
> particular?
>
>
> I think „single-line“ and „multiline“ should foremost apply to the code
> representation of a string and not its result.
> Otherwise "foo\nbar“ would be a multiline string with your reasoning,
> wouldn’t you agree?
>

I think Robert Bennett has summarized the differences between his view and
my view of literals very well. Keep in mind we're talking about _string
literals_, not strings. To me, a literal is something that represents its
data as literally as possible. Therefore, what makes something a
_multiline_ string literal is simple: it permits literal newlines.


> Therefore a multiline string is one which is written over several lines of
> *code* to make maintenance easier.
> From that follows naturally that as soon as line breaks are introduced for
> hard wrapping we are talking about multiline strings.
>
> In addition as soon as line breaks are introduced in the code the question
> of indentation arises which is solved neatly with the multiline string
> proposal by the position of the ending delimiter which is not possible with
> single-line strings.
>

> -Thorsten
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20170422/d347f0d9/attachment.html>