[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0182 - String Newline Escaping

[Alex Blewitt]

> On 13 Jul 2017, at 23:14, David Hart via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 14 Jul 2017, at 00:21, Jordan Rose <jordan_rose at apple.com <mailto:jordan_rose at apple.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> [Proposal: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0182-newline-escape-in-strings.md <https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0182-newline-escape-in-strings.md>]
>> 
>> This is a tiny, tiny point amidst the broader discussions others are having, but
>> 
>>> 	• All whitespace characters between \ and the newline are disregarded.
>> 
>> Why? Why bother allowing whitespace characters between \ and the newline?
> 
> The reasoning is to be consistent with trailing whitespace in the rest of the code: to leave that to a linter instead. Or to see it differently, even with whitespace between \ and the newline, the programmer’s intent is still clear. Why generate an error?

For the same reason that code allows (e.g.) a comment at the end of the line; you wouldn't expect (newline continuation) (comment) to mean the same thing as if generic whitespace were added at the end. The convention in other languages is that \ immediately precedes the line feed to indicate a continuation, not that an orphan \ is valid on its own.

The reason that \(newline) is valid while \(otherchar)(newline) isn't is because \ immediately precedes another character that it is escaping, and it's possible that \(space) would have a meaning in the future, whereas \(newline) won't.

Alex

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