From: "Marcel Molina Jr." <marcel@...>
Date: 2004-10-03T15:15:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Feature Request:  Truly Indented Here-Docs

On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 12:55:51PM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> Ruby's here-doc syntax baffles me.  I don't get the indent the end tag 
> feature.
> 
> string = <<-END_OF_STRING
>   Line one...
>   line two...
>   line three.
>   END_OF_STRING
> 
> That leaves all the tabs at the beginning of those lines, which then 
> begs the question, why did I bother to indent the end tag?
> 
> It would make a lot more sense to me if lines of a here-doc were 
> stripped of leading whitespace equal to the indention of the end tag.  
> Is there any reason this wasn't done, or isn't practical?
> 
> If not, please consider this an official request, by at least one 
> coder...

if you want to have your here-doc indented to line up with your code
but don't want the here-doc's content to be indented (not what you are
really asking, i know), there is a pretty ugly way of doing this.

example:
    
class Blah 
    def indented_method_def_with_here_doc
        string = <<-END_OF_STRING
            This text won't have leading white space
            even though the here-doc
            is indented.
            But is the gsubing stuff uglier than breaking
            your indentation?
            END_OF_STRING
        string.gsub(Regexp.new('^' + string[/^\s+/]), '')
    end
end

marcel
-- 
Marcel Molina Jr. <marcel@vernix.org>