OpenEuphoria

1. Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by nurminski Feb 18, 2009
• 1111 views

Greetings.

Sorry, if I am missing something vital in documentation, but is there a way for difining stings in Euphoria in 'heredoc' style? It's very boring to escape all quotes in HTML/XML, Java scipts and so on. So instead of writing complicated escaped strings it is abslotely must:

k=here comes the text as it will be present, no need to escape " and ' and other stuff Is there a heredoc syntax of strings present? If no, please consider it may be in future releases.

3. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Feb 18, 2009
• 1082 views

Ok, I can do this. I suggest this syntax ...

k=#/ 
here comes 
the text    as 
it will be present, no need to escape " and ' and other stuff 
/ 

The idea is that if a '#' is found that is immediately followed by any one of #'`~$^/\|, it indicates the begining of a string literal that terminates with the next occurance of whatever character followed the initial '#'. The one exception here is that if the resulting text begins with a new-line character, the text is trimmed of the leading new-line and any trailing new-line character.

-- Example Code -- 
constant s = #/"one" "two"/ 
constant t = #` 
 
"three"  
"four" 
 
` 

 
constant u = #$ 
"three"  
"four" 
$ 
 
printf(1, "[%s]\n", {s}) 
printf(1, "[%s]\n", {t}) 
printf(1, "[%s]\n", {u}) 
------------------ 

This would output ...

["one" "two"] 
[ 
"three" 
"four" 
] 
["three" 
"four"] 

5. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Feb 19, 2009
• 1032 views

I forget one language, but one thing I enjoyed about it was it's multiline string had the option to strip the indent prefix. For instance:

sequence output 
if idx = 1 then 
    idx = idx + 25 
    output = #/Hello Mr. John Doe, 
 
This email is being generated to you for some purpose of 
which I have no clue. 
 
Thank you for your support, 
 
Mr. Jeff Doe 
/ 
else 
    idx = idx + 30 
    output = #/Hello Mr. John Doe, 
 
This email is being generated to you for some purpose of 
which I have no clue. 
 
I am very sad that you have choose not to support us, 
 
Mr. Jeff Doe 
/ 
end if 

The above is very difficult to read. Sure, you can create constants outside of the if or do other tricks to make it look a little better, but that also is very hard to read, here's an example of that:

sequence msg1 = #/ 
Dear Mr. John Doe, 
 
This message ...... 
 
Thank you.... 
 
Mr. Jeff Doe/ 
sequence msg2 = #/ 
Dear Mr. John Doe, 
 
This message .... 
 
Sorry.... 
 
Mr. Jeff Doe/ 

Now, what the language did that I am speaking of (wish I could remember which one it was):

if idx = 2 then 
    idx = idx + 25 
    output = #/ 
        #Dear Mr. John Doe, 
        # 
        #I am very happy for your support 
        # 
        #Mr. Jeff Doe 
        #/ 
else 
    .... more .... 
end if 

So, if the string starts with the magic hash, then all white space preceeding it is stripped. Maybe it could be the magic character that you choose:

sequence out = #/ 
    /Hello 
    /World 
    /Next line ends it. 
    // 

On the last line in that example, the first / sets the place that will be stripped, the last ends the string definition. Therefore there is no confusion as to if the / ends the string or is just a begining of string definition character.

Just thinking aloud. This syntax of course would not be required to be used, you could do as the first example on this post and just put your entire string on the first column, but for many, the above syntax will make the difference between something readable/maintainable and something that just causes mass confusion.

Jeremy

7. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by nurminski Feb 20, 2009
• 1033 views

And the last thing, that can be usefull. Depending of the symbol after # the CR_LF is treated as in Unix or like in Windows.

1. / for example command interpreter to generate UNIX-formated LF
2. $ commands to render Windows/DOS CR-LF

All other symbols except / and $ will be treated as instruction to render the string in the style default to the operating system on which interpreter is runing.

9. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Feb 21, 2009
• 998 views

I wonder if it wouldn't be better to not allow so many delimiters but just double the delimiter. For instance:

sequence s = #// 
    abc, def 
      abc, def 
// 
 
-- "    abc, def\n      abc, def" 

Further, provide a "stripping" delimiter,

sequence s = #@@ 
    abc, def 
      abc, def 
@@ 
 
-- "abc, def\n  abc, def" 

When the stripping delimiter is used, all the white space of the first string is stripped from subsequent lines.

Jeremy

11. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by ScriptBasic Feb 22, 2009
• 953 views

In ScriptBasic, the """ quotes allow multi-line strings and comments.

PRINT """ This is a multi-line string."""

'""" This is a multi-line comment"""

This is a real time saver for the HTML part of CGI applications.

John

13. Re: Just a little question before 4.0 will be released

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Feb 22, 2009
• 969 views

PRINT """ This 
is 
a  
multi-line 
string.""" 
 
'""" This 
is 
a 
multi-line 
comment""" 

Multi-line text literals have now been implemented. Multi-line comments are coming soon.

15. Re: Heredoc strings

• Posted by mattlewis (admin) Feb 22, 2009
• 954 views

if idx = 2 then 
    idx = idx + 25 
    output = #/ 
________ 
        Dear Mr. John Doe,  
         
            I am very happy for your support  
            with respect to the offer of 
            help. 
         
        Mr. Jeff Doe  
        / 
else 
    .... more .... 
end if 

Dear Mr. John Doe,  
 
    I am very happy for your support  
    with respect to the offer of 
    help. 
 
Mr. Jeff Doe  

I presume that the trimmed whitespace needs to be spaces. How would it deal with a tab thrown in?

Matt

17. Re: Heredoc strings

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Feb 23, 2009
• 932 views

Both the SPACE and TAB character are classed as a single whitespace character. Thus leading TABs are not expanded to equivalent SPACEs before trimming. It is not advisable to use TABS as leading whitespace in extended string literals.

19. Re: Heredoc strings

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Feb 23, 2009
• 920 views

Neither am I, but its the best I've come up with so far.

TABs are allowed. However, you may not get the effect you were after. Unless one encodes the tabstops into the source code, the parser is never going to know how many spaces your TABs are set to.

I'm not sure about the cumbersome part as it seemed easy to do when I played with it, but the weird part might be a good thing as it certainly alerts the reader that something special is happening here.

I hope so.