From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-07-24T05:55:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Syntax "surprise"

On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 05:40:29AM +0900, David Douthitt wrote:
> To me, that is not an idiom; this is an idiom:
> 
> foo("This is a really long string.  in fact it is so long \
> that it requires two lines....")
> 
> To me, that makes much more sense.

There is at least one problem with that:

  irb(main):001:0> s = "this is a \
  irb(main):002:0" test"
  "this is a test"
  irb(main):003:0> s = "this is a \ 
  irb(main):004:0" test"
  "this is a  \ntest"

The difference here is subtle.  The second case has a space after the \.

It also has the side-effect of messing up indentation.

Paul