Re^2: (FoxUni) Re: Explanation of complicated line?

Looks like a bad habit developed by a bash programmer, as bash gets really upset if you don't "literal" your newlines . The backslash means, roughly, "continued on next line".

Perl, fortunately, understands what you mean when you split lines for readabilty. You can even split your quotes, such as:

my $foo = "This
Is
Rather
Poetic";
[download]

Which, for comparison, is not so easy in something like C:

char *foo = "This\
Is\
Rather\
Tedious";
[download]

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Re(3): Explanation of complicated line? by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on Apr 02, 2002 at 21:36 UTC
Um, no. At least on gcc 2.9.3: `char* foo = "This\ is\ rather\ tedious";` [download] produces the string "Thisisrathertedious", and: `char* foo = "This is rather poetic";` [download] produces what you're getting from your Perl example. Don't knock C for the wrong reasons. `-- :wq`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Explanation of complicated line? by tadman (Prior) on Apr 02, 2002 at 23:16 UTC
I'm sure it's a historical artifact more than a requirement, especially considering how some improvements made to C++ are trickling back into C (i.e. '//'-style comments) if only because of popular demand. The "correct" C example, using backslashes, is reasonably: `char *foo = "This\n\ Is\n\ Rather\n\ Tedious";` [download] I suppose that earlier and/or less robust C compilers would not comprehend the concept of a string being continued onto a second line. I'm sorry if you mistook my unfortunate "ignorance" as being anti-C. I meant nothing of the sort. I'm rather a fan of C++.	[reply] [d/l]