[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Improve String Literals

[Tony Allevato]

On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 6:47 AM Adrian Zubarev via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> Well the main complain I had during the discussion with David was, that I
> previously had such a model in mind which will break up long double-quoted
> string literals. Please look up this design in the alternative section of
> our proposal. By adding slightly redundant multi-line string literal syntax
> for consistency renders that complain to zero. By allowing:
>
> "
> SELECT 'name'
> FROM 'people'
> WHERE age > 20
> "
>
> it becomes clear that the trailing backslash should only be used for
> escaping new line injection in multi-line string literals, but not for
> breaking up long strings (similar to other languages like JavaScript):
>
> "SELECT 'name' \
> FROM 'people' \
> WHERE age > 20"
>
> This also lets us adopt the C/Objective-C syntax instead.
>
> "SELECT 'name' "
> "FROM 'people' "
> "WHERE age > 20"
>
> Regarding the C/Objective-C syntax, what would be the advantages over
concatenating the strings with `+`? All I can see is that it saves two
characters per line—is that sufficient to warrant adding another way of
doing the same thing? They're available in C/Obj-C because `+` for string
literals *wasn't* available, but since Swift does support `+` for string
literals, I think it's hard to rationalize adding this.



>
> --
> Adrian Zubarev
> Sent with Airmail
>
> Am 16. Mai 2017 um 15:02:06, Gwendal Roué via swift-evolution (
> swift-evolution at swift.org) schrieb:
>
> I wonder whether this addition was introduced in order to make the
> proposal as consistent as possible, and prevent some criticisms. It has
> proven pointless. I suggest forgetting about pleasing people who don't want
> to be pleased, and to reconsider this "divorce" section. Consistency is not
> the main point. The main point is UX. This means easing the daily life of
> code writers, and easing the daily life of code readers (this involves
> being careful which text editors and code prettyfiers are unable to handle
> the proposal).
>
> > Support escaping newlines in multi-line strings with a trailing \
>
> Great. That's the main request, unless I'm misled: split long literals
> accross multiple lines.
>
> Now that Xiaodi Wu has found them, the core team questions about the
> trailing backslash should be addressed in more details.
>
> > Adopt the C/Objective-C syntax that concatenates single-line strings
>
> A battle-tested solution. Doesn't it look redundant with both the
> "divorce" and the trailing backslash?
>
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