From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2008-07-26T00:09:29+09:00
Subject: Re: weird backsplash behaviour inside single quotes

On 25/07/2008, Todd Benson <caduceass@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:33 AM, Todd Benson <caduceass@gmail.com> wrote:
>  > The backslash is a tool to escape the single quote inside a quote,
>  > therefore it must escape itself as well.
>
>
> I should be more clear.  If you have a symbol that performs a function
>  withing a domain (the quote) and you want to have the symbol not
>  perform that function, but just be part of the domain, you have to use
>  that symbol (escape) on itself.
>
well, there's no function to perform, there's no quote. And if we do
not distinguish between situation when there is a quote or not then
backslashing any other letter should also produce the letter. But then
we will lose the reason for which single quotes were introduced in the
first place: writing less backslashes.

Still this does not work well even now. There are less backslashes
needed to write \\something\something inside single quotes but the
added characters aren't balanced: something\something can be written
as is but for the double backslash a quadruple backslash is required.

That's a confusing inconsistency in my view: if I write 'a\b' and it
results in the exact value that is inside the quotes it is unexpected
and inconsistent that I need '\\\\a\b' to write  string with three
backslashes. Perhaps the only solution would be to forbid quoting
inside single quotes completely. Admittedly if only a backslash
followed by a single quote was special writing strings with a trailing
backslash would not be possible with single quotes.

Thanks

Michal