Re: Free format strings?

[Björn De Meyer <bjorn.demeyer@...>]

Peter Hill wrote:
> 
> In Lua we have both:
>     "abc\
>     def"
> and
>     "abc\ndef"
> which produce the same effect.
> 
> However there doesn't seem to be a way to wrap long strings *without*
> inserting a newline. Tradionally, "\" by itself has been used as a
> free-format wrap character for strings. So:
>     "abc\
>     def"
> was the same as
>     "abcdef"
> 
> Does Lua have such a feature? If not it should.
> 
> *cheers*
> Peter Hill.

The way you do it in Lua is simply to say

   "abc"
.. "def"

Yes, its' a concatenation, but string 
concatenation in Lua is a VM primitive,
so it's not that inefficient. 

If you must have the behaviour you propose, 
then edit llex.c, find the function   

static void read_string (LexState *LS, int del, SemInfo *seminfo) 

And change line number 278:
case '\n': save(LS, '\n', l); inclinenumber(LS); break;

to this:
case '\n': inclinenumber(LS); break;

That way, no newline character is stored. 
You'll also need to modify the string.format()
function, though for that assumes \<newline> 
stores a newline in the string.

-- 
"No one knows true heroes, for they speak not of their greatness." -- 
Daniel Remar.
Björn De Meyer 
bjorn.demeyer@pandora.be